MANNIX - "Death Is The Fifth Gear" (1972)

 

Here's a true WTF!? Wednesday feature for you, the 24th episode from Season 5 of the amazing TV show "Mannix." 

Mike (Voodoo Woman) Connors is Joe Mannix.

 

"Mannix" was on for 194 episodes from 1967 to 1975. This insane episode was titled "Death Is The Fifth Gear."

Mannix is driving a race car!

Then he starts seeing these fireballs coming at him!

He's hallucinating like crazy and ends up crashing the car.

This is the way that he's seeing things!

Mannix is usually 100% on top of his game so to see him this messed up and vulnerable is unsettling!

Even his assistant Peggy Fair thinks so!

 Gail Fisher won an Emmy award for her role as Peggy, and was the first black actress to do so.

Mannix wants out of the hospital badly!

I keep thinking about what Grandma and Grandpa must have thought when they sat down to watch this episode!

Mannix can no longer distinguish the hallucinations from reality!

Seeking help wherever he can find it, Mannix makes his way into this strange room with Elsa (The Bride Of Frankenstein) Lanchester as Edna Barrington in it.

Even as he's pursued by the attendants Mannix continues to have the hallucinations!

Mannix dies and the show is over prematurely. Well, at least he thinks he does!

Mariette (Marnie) Hartley as Nurse Cara Guild tries to help Mike out, or is she part of the problem?

Very early in her career, Mariette was in "The Twilight Zone" episode known as "The Long Morrow."

Despite all the treatment in the world, the hallucinations just keep on happening!

Mike is so paranoid, he doesn't even trust Gail any more!

Is it still considered paranoia when it's true that somebody is really after you?

When nothing else works, how about a little carbon monoxide?

Finally after some days time, or almost an hour of drooling onscreen time, Mannix is his old self again.

MONSTER MOVIES I SAW AT THE THEATER IN 1958

 Well, I thought I'd do another post of  horror and sci-fi movies I saw at the theater, this time 1958, and it was a banner year to be sure! Just check out the movies I was sooo lucky to see when I was a measly 10 years old...

Oh man, this movie was a thrill and a half plus some! It was non-stop action with some of the greatest animated movie monsters ever created, by Ray Harryhausen and his pals of course. Wow, a real scary/fun roller coaster ride!

This movie had a great cast of characters and was very fun to watch, but was tarnished by its special effects, namely the giant space alien that was very transparent at times. They tried to fix it in post but it was futile. And that weird giant hand just made me laugh. All in all though, it was an entertaining sci-fi flick

This was one of Mr. BIG's finest movies, the special effects were top notch for the time. I remember loving the giant furniture and telephone, the dolls of puppet people were excellent even if they used cut out photos.

O... M... G!.. My dad took me to see this freak out fest and I was never the same again, seriously!! The creepiest parts were at the beginning, starting with the old man and then at the doctor's office. When Steve went back to see if the old man was okay, he's walking outside the house when he sees something crashing against the window blinds... I got out of my seat and went into the lobby and sat there 10 minutes before my dad dragged me back to my seat. Man, this movie was the absolute scariest! I even had the 45 record, freaking love that theme song!!

Donald Wolfit was a terrifying mad scientist, but I don't remember a whole lot about the movie because Hammer made so many of them using that formula. Their labs were the best!

As cheap as this little thing is, I love it to pieces. At the time though, it was hilarious when they show the little Brain Eaters scooting around the place, I mean, holy cow, what the Hell!

This movie left me stunned at how cool the Colossus looked, what a great monster movie it was! As usual, it ends up a tragedy, his son is the one that destroys him...

Here's another cheapie that has its moments, especially when the Faceless Man starts moving around, causing mayhem and crushing people!

I actually saw EARTH vs. THE SPIDER, and that particular poster is a little hard to find for some reason. Anyway, I liked it, but I had already seen TARANTULA a few years earlier and there was no comparison. Joe's hot rod was very nice, but the part that still bugs me is when the Spider was displayed at the school (really?!), its leg just looked wimpy! Best part was Paul Blaisdell's motorcycle policeman dummy after the Spider sucked all his blood out!

THE FLY and THE BLOB were the two movies that really kicked my ass, remember, I was only 10 years old! When David Hedison was walking around in his lab coal, right hand in pocket, head draped, unable to talk, well that was unnerving enough, but when he was shown with his fly head and hand exposed, I almost fainted, I'm not kidding. I cannot watch it now, too sad. James Clavell's screenplay is pure genius! What a ride!

Wow, here's another mind blowing movie for me, it totally kept my attention the whole time. The skeletons looked a little crappy with clear plastic wrap for skin, but when they go into the cave with the satellite and see the guy who got stuck there inside of the blob, yikes, blobs! The tension of the thing growing in cycles was pretty intense too.

Oh man, I dug this crazy movie! The Frankenstein monster at the beginning was creepy and weird as Hell. Boris Karloff as the mas scientist was great, but I liked that freaky atomic Frankenstein wrapped in cloth, it's one of my all time favorite monster!

There was so much drama going on that it was easy for this monster kid to lose interest, I just didn't remember much about it. It used some gadgets from FORBIDDEN PLANET and even some of the electronic sounds, round peg in a square hole.

I liked this one, the monster was pretty unique, the action was okay, and that last scene made me dizzy because I has a touch of acrophobia. But the part I'll never forget is the sweat on Robert's rear end when he was climbing the stairs, looks like he wet himself!

Wow, wow, wow!! This thing was a real thriller, in color with lots of bright red blood. Chris Lee was the man, his portrayal of Dracula is number one. The climax was just too much, another amazing movie from Hammer!

I saw this one with my dad and loved every minute of it, the rocket was definitely from Hell. The ending was intense, would their Thor missile destroy the Lost missile?!!

Talk about a thrill packed movie, this thing had it all, the creepy prehistoric fish, great transformation scenes, and plenty of mayhem! The cherry on top was that giant dragonfly!

I was enthralled by the beginning credit music and the digital delay used after the spaceship goes through a time warp. It was okay as a movie, beautiful women are always a plus, it had a giant spider reused from WORLD WITHOUT END. The girlie power plant at the end is one of the worst sci-fi sets, ever!

Again, those Hammer horror movies came through with a consistent mad lab theme, always the best. I remember this one had a sad ending, being their latest Frankenstein monster.

I really like this strange little movie, it was about kids saving the day. Loved the rocket at the military base, and it had a different kind of blob creature, making my day. 

This is another weird movie I liked, it just had a lot of elements that pushed my buttons. The characters went to a double bill movie with I WAS A TEENAGE WEREWOLF and i WAS A TEENAGE FRANKENSTEIN playing, I liked the noise their time machine made, but showing the lady from the future at the end, well, she looked goofy. One great part is when the hired hand Angelo is seen in his shack reading a girlie magazine and has nudie pictures of girls pinned on the wall!

This one creeped me out pretty good, the Thing looked terrifying with its makeup. All in all, it was at the end of the Universal fifties run and this one had a small budget.

Damn, I loved this movie, with the aliens taking over the mind of the head of the space project, where he burns his hand and just wipes off the residue, the squat rockets and wild satellites, it's definitely one of Corman's best films.

Wow, how lucky was I to get to see this many monster movies, they have had a lasting effect on me and I/m still doing retro monster art, in fact, I'll be working on them after I hang up. Click.

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!