DISNEYLAND: 'Man In Space' Part 2 - 1955

As promised, here's part 2 from this great episode of DISNEYLAND. This time we take a trip around the Moon that showcases some beautiful artwork in the process. This is the kind of art that captured my young imagination and had a lot to do with why I chose sci-fi and horror art as my lifelong endeavor!

Things get going when the rocket is brought out of the giant hangar. It slowly moves out to the launch pad to prepare for the take off.

Here's the bunker with the technicians getting ready to start the countdown. Love the art here, the bunker design, the vehicles, the equipment, the dude, wow!!

This piece of equipment caught my eye. Is it possible that H. R. Giger, the artist that created the ALIEN monster and sets, stole this design for his alien spacecraft from this Disney masterpiece? It looks like it to me! My grandmothers' maiden names were Kilgore and Giger!!

Everything is GO! All we need now is the countdown!..

Five.. Four.. Three.. Two.. One!.. BLASTOFF!!

High above the Earth, the rocket plane loses its bottom stages.

And, the rocket plane is now in space, headed for the Moon!

There it is, the Moon! Once around the orb, and, back to Earth we go!

This part is a little weird. During a spacewalk, a satellite zooms by, just barely missing the rocket and crew! What the Hell?!

Now it's time to prepare for the landing back on Earth. The rocket plane turns red as it enters the stratosphere.

The plane makes ready for the landing...

Love this shadow shot of the people watching the landing. We just don't wear hats like we used to, kind of a shame since they make the wearers look more interesting!

This shot is one of my favorites, love all the shadows and the spotlight in the background. I remember how popular spotlights were when I was growing up, you always knew where to go when there was a special event. We'll have more for you tomorrow, be here!!

STRANGERS ON A TRAIN - Alfred Hitchcock (1951)

 Howdy, and Welcome to another Weird and Whorled Wednesday in The Dungeon!

This week, the Alfred Hitchcock film we watched was the classic "Strangers On A Train" from 1951! It's a pretty amazing piece of work, and contains all the Hitchcock elements like suspense and droll humour, that make his films so freakin' awesome!

 

I got this DVD on eBay from China as part of a very inexpensive A.H. set, and this particular disc was broken! I wrote the guy who sent it to me, and he replaced it in just a little over a week! This guy's got a future as a businessman, unlike another Chinese eBay seller who hasn't managed to send me a $7.99 phone battery in over two months! Avoid this guy like the plague! Pick and choose, like everything in life, there's good ones and bad ones! This particular cat is awesome, and here is the place to get this set! Just might be the bargain of the century!

The two strangers on the train are Farley (The Rope) Granger as tennis player Guy Haines.....

.....And Robert Walker as psychotic spoiled rich kid Bruno Antony! Robert only ended up with 23 acting credits to his name because he died at the age of 32 from a bad reaction to prescription drugs! Now you know why I don't want to take Lyrica!

Mr. Hitchcock has his cameo as a guy with a cello boarding the train.

Guy's estranged psycho-bitch wife works in a record store!
Kasey (Two Lost Worlds) Rogers plays Miriam Haines!

Bruno and his Mom have got kind of a strange relationship!
The Mother was played by Marion (The Graduate) Lorne!

Bruno laughs at his Mother's painting because he thinks it looks like his Father who he hates!

So the basic story is Bruno offers to kill Guy's wife, if Guy will reciprocate by killing Bruno's Dad, but Guy is repelled by the whole concept and tells Bruno to F off, but Bruno, being a psycho, is not real receptive and decides to go ahead and carry out his part of the deal!
He tracks guy's wife to this amusement park where she is slutting around with a couple of guys!

Having a great time on the carousel! You can see Bruno in the background!
He's stalking her, but she is such a flirt, she just thinks it's a strong come-on!

The Tunnel Of Love ride goes to Magic Isle, and when Bruno gets Miriam alone he viciously strangles her, and the whole scene is seen through her soon to be broken glasses!

How's this for a fine trilogy, the Morton Family that includes Dungeon super hero Leo G. (Topper, Tarantula) Carroll as the Father, Senator Morton, Ruth (Jungle Queen, Outer Limits) Roman as Leo's daughter, and Guy's girlfriend Anne Morton, and Alfred Hitchcock's daughter Patricia as Ruth's little sister Barbara Morton!

Even though Bruno's family is equally rich, he still has to weasel his way into the Morton socialite circle! At a party, in a casual conversation, Bruno decides to show Norma Varden as Mrs. Cunningham, how he would murder someone if he had to! During this act, Bruno spots Barbara Morton, and because of her glasses being similar to Miriam's, he freaks out and actually starts to strangle Mrs. Cunningham before he passes out! Norma Varden made a career out of being characters whose title started with Mrs., Aunt, Mother, Dr., Frau, Miss, Wife, Lady, Ma, Madame, etc. etc. and she was really good at it!

For reasons I'm not willing to explain, the whole story goes back to the amusement park where Miriam was strangled by Bruno, and a crazy out of control merry-go-round!

Bruno and Guy fight it out to the finish on this high speed roundabout!

In Truffaut's interview with Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred says this scene terrified him, because this old man's head was only about an inch away from the bottom of the insane flying horses ride!

Going what looks to be about 60 miles per hour, the carousel finally careens to a stop and implodes after that old man throws on the brake!

The crowd of distraught family members and onlookers has no idea why this all happened!
How it would have been reported in the media is anyone's guess, but you could probably place a pretty sound bet that it wasn't accurate!

I'll leave you with this tricky poster of Alfred lifting the 'L' out of Stranglers, turning it into Strangers!
That's the kind of underlining chicanery Alfred Hitchcock constantly throws at you! If you're lucky to catch half of it, then you did good, because he was a lot smarter than most of us!

DISNEYLAND: 'Man In Space' Part 1 - 1955

Our family got our first TV back in 1953, and, when Walt's new DISNEYLAND hit the airwaves we sat down and enjoyed every single episode of that great series! By far, my favorite stuff was from Tomorrow Land. Here's part 1 of Man In Space, part 2 will come on Friday.

This episode explains what it's like to visit space with experts joining in on the discussion.

Walt starts the show surrounded by some awesome models of spaceships and the like!

Here's Ward Kimball, producer, writer and director of the series. This guy is no joke, he joined Disney Studios in 1934 as an animator and became involved in all aspects of animation production, most notably as the designer of Jiminy Cricket for the film "Pinnochio." He was also responsible for the redesign of Mickey Mouse! Walt recognized Kimball's achievements by making him one of the "Nine Old Men", Disney's semi-official group of advisors.

Then, here's Wernher von Braun, the German that helped design Hitler's V-2 missile, quite a score. That's his design for a 4-stage space rocket for the US.

This expert tells everyone how a rocket engine works, interesting as Hell for us kids. I was actually a science major in high school until I took chemistry, I hated it and changed my major to art when I was a sophomore.

Bring in the fifties style artwork! They show some odd rocket designs from the past.

Then they show some footage of old time uses of rocket engines, some worked and some exploded like a powder keg!

Okay, time to bring in our hero, the typical fifties cartoon dude. Here, he's really enjoying his ride until he plows it into a freakin' telephone pole!

One of my very favorite things was the rocket sled, I used to make them out of clay and throw them against the wall to see if the passenger survived the crash! Hey, number 13!!

Time to go into space to understand the effects of weightlessness, things seem fine until he goes beyond the stratosphere!

Not sure what this has to with, but, Disney sure liked to use cigars and booze bottles for props!

When you're in space with no gravity, it's hard to know which way is up, or down, or sideways!!

No matter how bad things get, there's always that certain something to brighten the day!

Beware of radiation in space, and, meteors!!

After our hero gets sucked out through the meteor hole, he bakes on the side facing the sun and freezes on the opposite side, sooo...

He needs a spacesuit with some handy Swiss knife tools, and, a tooth brush!

Then, his hand held rocket gun gets him into a ton of trouble! Tune in Friday for part 2, when we take a trip into space with some of the finest fifties space art you'll ever see!!