MY LIVING DOLL - "Boy Meets Girl" (1964)

 Here's a pretty Wild Wednesday feature for you!
"My Living Doll!"

 "My Living Doll" was a TV series that came out in 1964, and was only on for one season.

It was a show about a female robot and was filled with all kinds of innocent perversion! It's no wonder I liked it so much! This was the very first episode and it was titled "Boy Meets Girl."

 The 'star' of the show was one my favorite leading men from the 60's, Robert 'Bob" Cummings!

For me, Bob Cummings was like a better looking, not as stupid, and funnier Jerry Lewis! 

Bob's character is named Dr. Robert McDonald!

 But the person who steals the show is the absolutely stunning Julie Newmar as the robot doll!

 If my math is correct, Julie Newmar just turned 86 a couple of weeks ago. Julie is so pretty that it makes me believe there must be a God!

 On the right is Henry Beckman as a Dr. Carl Miller. The Doctor is upset and freaking out because he has lost an object called AF709, a secret project he's been working on! Bob tells him if he finds it, he will let him know! Henry Beckman is one of those special people with a line of credits as long as your arm, and he was in two "Twilight Zone" episodes, "A Thing About Machines," and "Valley Of The Shadows!" If he's got a familiar face, it's because he was also in so many cool TV shows in the 50's, 60's, and 70's that included titles like "Peter Gunn," "My Favorite Martian," "The Man From U.N.C.L.E.," and "The Munsters."

 Bob sees some bare feet enter the room, and looks up to see.....

 .........This gorgeous woman who is not quite all dressed!

 She kind of talks in riddles, and Dr. Bob is a little confused until she turns to leave!

 That's when he realizes that she is AF709, the object that Dr. Miller was saying that he was missing!

 On the right is Jack Mullaney as Dr. Peter Robinson who is going to fall in love with the robot on first sight. Of course, at this point, neither of them know she's a robot! Dr. Bob calls Dr. Miller to tell him that he found his 'project' and that she is exiting the building! Jack Mullaney passed away at the age of only 52 after having a stroke, but he still managed to be in a memorable series of flicks like Disney's "The Absent Minded Professor," "Dr. Goldfoot And The Bikini Machine," "Spinout" with Elvis, and "Little Big Man!"

 Julie Newmar dressed like this is sexier than a million or more completely naked women could ever be!

 Dr. Miller tries to explain things to an unbelieving Dr. McDonald, and then asks him to take the robot home with him for a couple of days, because he needs to leave town. (He ends up being gone for a couple of months!) Bob has no idea what to think!

 Julie Newmar is still probably best remembered for her role as Catwoman!

 Out in public, the robot is creating quite a stir, and Dr. Bob thinks he better get her to his apartment A.S.A.P!

 After being shown the control buttons on her back, Bob is finally convinced that she really is a robot, so he says something to her like, "Okay, first thing is, we need to get you out of those clothes," meaning get her into something more normal. She is a subservient robot, so she complies and starts to disrobe!

As much as he would like it, that wasn't really what nice guy Bob had in mind!

 Bob doesn't even trust himself with her now, and calls his sister to come over and act as a chaperone!

 "My Living Doll" was only a half hour program, so without commercials, it only lasts 25 minutes, and gets over way too fast, but if you have Amazon Prime, you can watch all 26 episodes for no extra charge! Hell, that's worth the annual price of an account all by itself! I know a lot of people have beefs with Amazon for various reasons, but I'm sure not one of them just because of stuff like this!

Speaking of Amazon, you know it's usually all fun and games around here, but if the Brazilian government doesn't get off it's ass soon, and do something about the out of control fires burning in the Amazon rain forest, we're all going to end up living in some cheap ass Sci-Fi movie about the end of the world!
In the meantime, I'm going to watch as many episodes of "My Living Doll" as I can, and I suggest you do the same!

CHARLIE McCARTHY, DETECTIVE - Various Artists - "The Slap-Happy Sleuth" (1939)

The 1939 wacky feature "Charlie McCarthy, Detective" is a curious mix of mystery thriller and comedy, and a great little hysterical and historical piece of Americana!

Like a bunch of other films through film history, there is a lot you just have to take for granted, and that's just the way it is. If you have no imagination, you're not going to get it, because Charlie is not really treated like a dummy, he's basically just another character in this movie! There's even a scene where he gets shot, and they have to do surgery to remove the bullet, and it's done completely straight, just like he was a real person!

Charlie and his pal Edgar Bergen are entertaining the very distinguished looking Louis Calhern as big-time editor Arthur Aldrich. Louis ended up in some major motion pictures like "Duck Soup," "Annie Get Your Gun," "Notorious," and "The Asphalt Jungle!"

Edgar Bergen was one of the most famous ventriloquists of all time, not the best at the art, but a true innovator. He would even take potshots at himself, by having Charlie give him crap for his lips moving! If you have any doubts to the man's credits, "The Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show" was on the radio from 1937 to 1956, and Edgar has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for radio, one for TV, and one for the movies!!! Here's Charlie taking a potshot at Mr. Aldrich!

Mr. Ray Turner has the quintessential stereotypical 1939 black guy role as "Gravy," and you can look at it one of two ways, he was either a funny black man, or a black man being used by the white establishment for a laugh! Either way, Ray had lots of work over the years and was in 99 features and shorts! So what's got Gravy's attention???

It's none other than Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy's pal, Mortimer Snerd stowed away in the car!

Mr. Aldrich has a nice pad, and some artwork on the wall, that looks like a work by Salvador Dali, but I'm pretty sure it's just a prop! I did some searching and couldn't find a real Dali painting that looked like that!

The love interest is the couple of "Love That Bob" Cummings as reporter Scotty Hamilton and Constance Moore as the singer Sheila Stuart! You might not remember "The Bob Cummings Show," but everyone should know about the TV series, "My Living Doll" that ran from 1964 to 65 and starred Robert Cummings as Dr. Robert McDonald, and featured the incredible Julie Newmar as AAF709, an actual living robot! Singer and actress Constance Moore was Wilma Deering in "Buck Rogers" and sang in a number of musicals!

Edgar, Charlie and Gravy are at the Aldrich estate to help raise money for charity by selling hot dogs!

The dim-witted Mortimer Snerd keeps showing up in the strangest places! Even though Edgar is doing Mortimer's voice too, Mortimer is more like a free agent! Mortimer was also the inspiration for the Looney Tunes character Beaky Buzzard!

Edgar Bergen lines out how the little mystery went down!

The music for "Charlie McCarthy, Detective" is a mixed bag starting with Constance Moore performing "Almost," a tune penned by Samuel Lerner and Ben Oakland, the other songs including "I'm Charlie McCarthy, Detective" were written by Harold L. Block, Jacques Press and Eddie Cherkose. Thanx again to the good Professor Grewbeard for loaning us his copy of "Charlie McCarthy, Detective," so we could share it with you all! All right, that's it for now, but stay tuned, because we've got a wild array of titles coming up this month, including a couple I don't even believe myself!

HOT CARS - Les Baxter - "Sucker Bait" (1956)

Normally when you see the words "Hot Cars," you think of souped-up hot rods and hot chicks, and that's sure what this poster looks like, but No, that's not it! Welcome back to Weird-Ass Wednesday outside in the parking lot of The Dungeon, and tonight's red light special.........

"HOT CARS"

"Hot Cars" is a truly unique movie about used car lots selling stolen cars, or literally, "Hot Cars!"

To make it look legit, they used real car lots, and gave them credit at the end! Robert(Invasion Of The Body Snatchers) Osterloh is the owner of this lot, Big John!

Now isn't this iconic America circa 1956? Handsome John(Revenge Of The Creature, Curucu, Beast Of The Amazon) Bromfield as the recently fired used car salesman, Nick Dunn, and his dear lovely stay-at-home wife Jane, as played by Carol Shannon. I don't know why, but Carol looks very familiar to me although she was only in 5 TV shows besides this movie. I must have seen them all!! Nick and Jane have a sick baby boy named Davy who is always off camera! I guess that's how they saved the money up to finance the big climax!

Bow House!

For some, the number one blonde bombshell of the 1950's and 60's was Joyce Renee Brown, aka Joi Lansing! Sometimes it's hard not to agree! Here's some creds: "Touch Of Evil," "Atomic Submarine," and "Hillbillies In A Haunted House!"

You might not know his name until now, but with 310 acting credits, Dabbs Greer as the snoopy Detective Davenport, has a face you will recognize if you've ever watched anything on TV from 1950 to 2003!

Joi Lansing died from breast cancer at the very young age of 43, but she still outlived both Marilyn Monroe (36) and Jayne Mansfield (34) by almost a decade! Besides her movie roles, some of her TV roles are forever too, like Shirley Swanson on "The Bob Cummings Show," and Gladys Flatt on "The Beverly Hillbillies!"

Nick Dunn just needs a shoulder to cry on, and Joi's character Karen Winter seems overly available!

Nick doesn't realize yet that Karen is the best girl of the crook who hired him! He's about to get set up to take a fall, but he doesn't have a clue! Sucker bait is right!

That claw of Karen Winter's might as well be around Nick's throat!

Detective Davenport has been murdered, and all the evidence points to Nick, but Oh, Yeah, he has an excuse, and his wife doesn't even care if he was with another woman as long as it means that he didn't kill anybody, so he admits that he was at Karen Winter's apartment! I like the way this shot is set up!

Another great shot shows the Detective questioning Miss Winter who denies she even knows Nick Dunn! Nick tells them he can identify the furnishings in the bedroom without going in there, but everything has been changed, and he looks like a dunce!

The music in the hot theme and throughout this film is by one of the Dungeon Super Faves, the phenomenal Les Baxter! You like horror movies, you like 60's surf movies, then Les Baxter is THE man!! Here are just the movies that Les composed for in the random year of 1963 : THE YOUNG RACERS, THE RAVEN, THE EVIL EYE, A BOY TEN FEET TALL, OPERATION BIKINI, X: THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES, BEACH PARTY, BLACK SABBATH, SAMSON AND THE SLAVE QUEEN, I TABÙ, and THE COMEDY OF TERRORS!

I would imagine that cinematographer William Marguiles gets credit for stuffing a camera inside the dashboard! Mark(The Pharaoh's Curse)Dana is tough guy Smiley Ward! Both Mark Dana and Joi Lansing were also in the 43rd of 48 Bowery Boys movies made also in 1956, called ironically "Hot Shots!"

Great cast, great music, but what makes this movie truly unique and historically significant is that it ends up in Santa Monica at magnificent Pacific Ocean Park!

The Sea Serpent Roller Coaster is the stage for what is in my humble opinion the best fight scene I've ever seen on a roller coaster!

You would think they would have had to use green screen to get shots that look this good, but as far as I could tell, it's all live action footage!

Freakin' Smiley gets what's coming to him!

I found "Hot Cars" streaming on Amazon Prime, and you can too! It's compact at just over an hour long, and a roller coaster ride that's well worth taking!