THE THREE STOOGES In "Idle Roomers" - 1944

Here's a fun episode where the boys are working as bellboys at a large hotel, where a sideshow promoter has brought in a wolf man named Lupe. And the real fun begins...

The Stooges have to wake up from their slumber when the desk calls them to take some luggage to an upstairs room.

Curly gets the chore of carrying the giant load of luggage and a crate up to the room. But the pile is too high and everything except the crate falls on Moe when Curly goes through the doorway.

Curly finally gets the crate to the room after busting his ass getting it there.

When he goes into the room, he finds sideshow promoter Mr. Leander there and he already has a bone to pick with the boys for their previous antics. He grabs his knives and starts throwing them at Curly who's standing by the door.

And, he's not kidding around!!

Mr. Leander shows his wife the poster for his new attraction and opens the door to the crate to show her what Lupe looks like. But, there's a knock on the door so he closes the crate.

The  Leaners leave because the boys have been sent to clean up the room because of the messes they made earlier. Curly thinks someone, or something, is in the crate and he unlocks the door to peek inside. But, Moe shows up to tell him to get back to cleaning.

Curly sees a radio and turns it on, and music plays as Curly sweeps the floor. Thing is, Lupe is as gentle as a lamb, until he hears music, then he goes berserk!

Moe has broken the radio over Curly's head and he can't get it off. Lupe has broken out of his cage and bonks Curly on the head repeatedly. Duke York plays Lupe.

After Lupe knocks Curly down, the radio broken to pieces, Lupe climbs out of the window. Curly looks up and thinks it's Moe that just went out the window.

The boys are back to work when they hear a woman screaming in another room, they go to her room to see what the problem is... The lady is talking to them when Lupe comes out from behind the curtain and stands behind Curly.

The lady sees Lupe standing there and cries... WOLF!! Curly thinks she's talking about him and he gets resentful about the whole thing.

But when Curly stands in front of a broken mirror and looks at Lupe (this is the first time he sees Lupe) and he tells the woman... Hey, you might have something there, I look horrible! They do the whole routine until Lupe breaks character and angrily growls at Curly.

Larry's kinda on his own a lot of the time in this one, here, he gets a taste of Lupe.

Of course Moe tells Curly to play the trombone as it should calm the wolf man down. They always have to learn the hard way.

Anyway, the ending has Lupe messing with the boys as they try and escape in the elevator.

The boys are relieved when they think they have evaded the monster for good, but, Lupe has control of up and down switch, and...

They fly into the clouds. Really good episode, love these guys the most, here at The Dungeon!

 

THE DEPUTY DAWG SHOW - "The Space Varmint" (1960)

This week's Saturday Night Special is another space themed cartoon. From 1960, here's Episode two from the first season of "The Deputy Dawg Show," titled

"The Space Varmint."

 

"The Space Varmint" was recommended to me by my good pal and comix artiste Brian James Riedel.

From the late 80's, here's a couple of the covers of Brian's self-published comic series he called

"FAB ION." 

 

This story starts with Deputy Dawg putting up a wanted poster for Muskie Muskrat. He's been stealing eggs and the Deputy doesn't like it.

To show how much he cares, Muskie draws a mustache on his mug on the wanted poster!

Dayton Allen was the guy who did the voice for Deputy Dawg, and he was also the voice of Muskie Muskrat. In other episodes, he was also the voice of other colorful characters like Vincent Van Gopher

Then this varmint from space shows up!

Muskie and the Space Varmint hit it off right from the first.

They're good pals already!

To show his new friend how much he likes him, the Space Varmint goes and gets Muskie a bunch of eggs!

The Space Varmint really likes eggs too!

Of course Deputy Dawg thinks Muskie stole the eggs!

Muskie rats out The Space Varmint, and Deputy Dawg thinks it's just a tall tale until he faces the Varmint himself!

Muskie comes up with a distraction plan and borrows an egg from Al E. Gator, and Space Varmint is in heaven when he gives it to him!

There's just one problem, the shell on the alligator egg is to thick and hard, and the Space Varmint can't crack it open!

He does everything in his power to crack open the egg, and when nothing else works, he tosses it up in the air, and when it lands back on the ground, it cracks open and a baby alligator pops out and immediately attacks the Space Varmint!

The Space Varmint is no match for the baby alligator at all.

The Space Varmint gets the Hell out of there as fast as he can, and heads back to Mars or wherever he came from.

Thanx Brian! Dagnabbit!!

PHOTOS FROM THE JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE

The James Webb Space Telescope, aka the JWST, became fully functional earlier this month and is sending us new photos of our universe. The Hubble has been giving us fantastic photos for years, thing is, the JWST is 100 times more powerful than the Hubble telescope, that's mind blowing!

This first structure, an abstract nebula (star nursery), is amazing in its complexity, and size. The universe is so immense it's mind boggling, it is a whopping 93 billion light years across. Considering that the universe is like 13.5 billion years old, that means that the universe is expanding at about eight times the speed of light!

Heavenly is what comes to mind here for me.

A wild painting by Vincent Van Gogh!

Here are a gang of galaxies doing their cosmic gravity dance, they will eventually merge into one super galaxy. Here's a wild fact to put COSMIC SIZE into perspective, get this... If the Milky Way collided with another galaxy, there would be no effect on us! That's right, the closest approaching star would be a gazillion miles away from us, and have zero effect on our solar system. That illustrates how the universe is even larger than you can imagine, it's ungodly large!

Some nebulas are here in a cluster, reminds me of the best abstract art there is.

Here's a photo of a Great Void surrounded by stars where there is basically nothing, no light. Things like this make astronomy interesting as Hell.

Radiated elements in gaseous form in giant clouds.

Here's the remains of a Super Nova explosion, spreading all the heavy elements and radiation out into the universe.

What a great piece of artwork!

A Nebula nob.

A Quasar star is one of the deadliest objects in space, radiation beyond comprehension.

Another great piece of abstract art!

And, another one!

This one reminds me of a busy futuristic city.

Heavenly bodies each and every one. Lucky for us the JWST is working away photographing the universe in high def.

SKY KING - "Operation Urgent" (1952) - In Color

 

It's Wild Western Wednesday down in The Dungeon, and tonight's feature is the first episode of the 1950's TV show "Sky King."

I saw this show a lot as a kid because it was on every Saturday morning after "My Friend Flicka" for many years, but I never saw it in color until yesterday, so this was pretty interesting. 

Thanks to that old cowpuncher Lord Litter in Berlin for once again finding crazy stuff like this for me. I hate to sound like a broken record, but if you don't think there's still good music being made in the world, then you really should go check out some of his radio shows. I guarantee you'll dig it!

 

Kirby Grant was "Sky King" in 72 episodes from 1952 to 1959. Kirby Grant was also a talented musician and singer, and performed or sang in quite a few movies like "Ghost Catchers" where he was the bandleader and performed with his orchestra, or in the movie "Chip Off The Old Block," where he was in a dance group called The Jivin' Jacks and Jills.

 

Sky King's plane was a twin engine Cessna called "Songbird" and there were quite a few of them used over the years, but the best known one was one of the later ones, a 1958 Cessna 310B, serial number 35548 that was owned by the Cessna Company. 

After the show ended, the plane was sold in 1959, and in 1961 it crashed near Delano, California, killing the pilot!

 

 

This first episode of the series was called "Operation Urgent." This distressed Air Force pilot is going down, and he's carrying secret documents that need to be protected. He's in the general area of The Flying Crown Ranch, and Sky King is able to get his call for help.

Todd (Invaders From Mars) Karns is Lieutenant Doug Mercer.

 

Lieutenant Mercer gives special instructions for Sky King to call into his base!

Sky gets a hold of his old friend Colonel Yates as played by Pierre (Creature With The Atom Brain) Watkin. 

Pierre had 431 credits to his name and was billed as White (As in Perry) in the 1948 version of "Superman," and was also in four episodes of the 1950's "The Adventures Of Superman" in different roles.

Lieutenant Mercer is stuck in literally the middle of nowhere.

 

 How ironic, a kindly old man just happens to be out strolling in the area!

 

Turns out that the old man has a shack with a bunch of radio equipment in it. Nothing suspicious of course. "Come on in, you look tired, have a cup of coffee!"

Do you suppose this is how 'Radio Shack' got their name? Are there even any 'Radio Shacks' open anymore?

 

Weird, the coffee is having the opposite effect on the Lieutenant. I think it was drugged! 

 

 

Lieutenant Mercer is a little slow, it took him this long to figure out that the kindly old man was actually a dirty rotten scoundrel named Griz Raetze! How'd this guy ever learn how to fly a plane?

 

Pretty hard to recognize him here, but the diabolical Griz Raetze was played by John Banner, who was also the beloved Sergeant Schultz in 168 episodes of "Hogan's Heroes" from 1965 to 1971.

 

 

Sky King's niece and nephew Penny and Clipper King, live with him and usually get involved in his adventures. Penny was played by Gloria (The Life Of Riley) Winters, and Clipper was played by Ron Hagerthy who was in "The Twilight Zone" episode titled "Dead Man's Shoes."

Clipper finds Lieutenant Mercer but Griz Raetze is a step ahead of him!

 

When she's not looking cute, a big part of Penny's job is to look worried.

 

Griz Raetze has got the shack wired up to blow up at two o'clock with Lieutenant Mercer and Clipper trapped inside!

 

Just in the nick of time Sky King bursts in and manically tears the bomb apart with only five seconds to spare. Sky was a real do or die kind of guy!

In real life Kirby Grant was a flying enthusiast and pilot, and sadly on Oct. 30, 1985 he was killed in a car accident while on his way to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger at Cape Canaveral, Florida, but Sky King will live forever!