RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON - Stanley Wilson - "Atomic Action" (1952)

Welcome to another edition of  the Wednesday Night Classic Serial down in The Dungeon!! Tonight's feature is "Radar Men From The Moon" starring the iconic Commando Cody! The music was composed by the prolific Stanley Wilson who somehow managed to have some 143 composing credits, and another 240 music department credits in a mere 27 years! Stanley was no slouch when it came to serials, he composed the music for many, many of them over the years, including "Federal Agents Vs.Underworld, Inc," "King Of The Rocket Men," "Radar Patrol Vs. Sky King," "Flying Disc Man From Mars," "Government Agents Vs. Phantom Legion," and "Zombies Of The Stratosphere!!!"

By 1952, the serials were starting to peter out, and it would be no time at all before they would only be seen on TV or maybe at your local theater's Saturday matinee that featured such entertainment as Zippy the Clown, Mitch Mitchell and "Unlock A Lock," along with a handful of cartoons, a couple of silent shorts, maybe some "Three Stooges" or "Laurel and Hardy" featurettes, and some minor feature film! Mom would drop off the kids to do some shopping, and come back three hours later to take them out for a burger and some ice cream sundaes!

But Republic was hanging in there, and still desperately introducing new characters like Commando Cody!

Serials were one of the greatest marketing scams of all times, tease the kids with 15 minutes, and leave them hanging! How could you possibly miss the next episode? Back then, they showed them once, and if you missed it, you were left out in the cold for God only knows how long!

It's 1952 for Christ's sake! What's going to possibly me more exciting than a Moon Rocket? Nothing, that's what! Space was still a good old fashioned mystery!!

Oh, No!!! It's the end of the world!!

Pretty cool looking ray gun, but those guys don't look much like Martians or Moon people, because they are rat turncoats, hired by the Moon guys to do their dirty work!

Time for George Wallace to go into action as Commando Cody! George Wallace ended up acting on TV for 6 decades, and was quite possibly on every TV show ever made, but his finest hour was as crew member Bosun in one of our ultra favourite films, "Forbidden Planet!" This George Wallace should no way be mixed up with the segregationist Governor of Alabama, nor the awesome black comedian George Wallace!

"Which way did he go George, Which way did he go?"

Really, not all that bad of flying effects for 1952!

Pretty damn good fight scene too! I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if somebody actually got hurt during this scene!

Okay, time to go to the Moon! The cop escort is driving an extra cool black and white shoebox!

Wow, those rocket seats look an awful lot like office chairs!!

Back in 1952, this is how you figured out how to get to the moon!!

The Moon's a pretty cool place, kinda reminds me of Iraq!

Commando Cody decides to check it out!

Even Moon elevators are cool, like they had some 1940's avant-garde art deco artiste designing all their shit!

Can't say much about the Moon's fashion designer though, scaly hoodie and vaporizing ray gun were already kind of passe' by 1952!

So this went on for 12 episodes, that's three months of forking out a quarter each and every week, and that's a lot of lawns to mow, but it was worth every penny of it, beyond a shadow of a doubt!!

THEY LIVE / Alive Films - 1988

It's Monster Monday with Tabonga, here at The Dungeon!.. Our feature stars my personal wrestling hero, Roddy Piper. I remember when we first got cable TV in 1980, Vince McMahon and the WWF hit the scene with the coolest junk ever, and, the Iron Sheik was champion! There was Bobby Heenan and his antics, announcer Mean Gene Okerlund, Hulk Hogan, Jesse The Body, Andre The Giant, Junkyard Dog and many more, but, my favorite maniac was definitely Roddy...

Eegah!! sent over a soundclip depicting a bleak future in LA as Roddy wanders the streets, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button next to the special X-Ray Specs, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula! Here's our audio offering for... THEY LIVE!

Roddy plays Nada, an out of work construction worker, he's forced to stay at a homeless shelter in east LA. He hooks up with Frank, played by the very talented, Keith David. At this very moment, Keith has 13 projects either in post or pre-production!! That's amazing. He also played Childs in Carpenter's THE THING.

Nada gets his hands on some special dark glasses a resistance group has created to actually be able to see through the aliens' electronic veil.

Nada cannot believe what he's freakin' seeing! I dig these monsters the most, Eegah!! should like the bottom pic.

In a satisfying moment, Nada calls out this old bat at the market!

Meg Foster plays Holly. She seems to have a genuine visceral dislike for Roddy in this scene where she pushes him through her bay window.

In one of the longest fight scenes in film history, Nada does everything he can to convince Frank to put the glasses on.

The boys get new hi-tech contact lenses and invade an alien event that will send Earthling to the alien planet to be farmed. Even though Roddy dies at the end, he takes out a main broadcasting component that creates the electronic veil! Now the aliens can be seen for what they really are!!

Fox News is immediately exposed!

This rich alien cat at the bar seems a little confused.

And, this horny Earth girl gets quite a surprise!

D.O.A. - "Nobody Dies For Free" (1950)

Time for the Saturday Night Film Noir Super Special, tonight featuring a clever little film from 1950 starring Edmond O'Brien, "D.O.A!"

Now I'm figuring it's safe to assume that everybody knows that "D.O.A" stands for Dead on Arrival! If not, well now you do!

"D.O.A." starts off with Edmond O'Brien as Frank Bigelow walking down a long hall, but it's really going to be a short haul, because Frank Bigelow has just found out that he's been poisoned!

Because of the nature of the poison that Frank has been poisoned with, and because there's no antidote after about 5 hours, when Frank finally gets to the Homicide Division, he is literally a walking, talking dead man!

So let's go back to the beginning, Frank has been called to go to San Francisco on some business, and he has to leave his secretary/lover behind to watch over the office! Frank's Girl Paula Gibson is played by Pamela Britton! Pamela doesn't have a lot of credits, but she has some good ones!! Pamela had the role of Dagwood's wife Blondie in 27 episodes of the awesome TV series "Blondie" that was based on the Sunday morning newspaper comic! Pamela was also Mrs. Lorelei Brown in 62 episodes of  "My Favorite Martian!" In 1974 Pamela started having headaches, so she went to see a doctor, two weeks later, she was dead at the age of 51, the victim of a brain tumor! Life's not fair kids!

You might wonder what those funny swizzle stick noises are in the little sound clip I've provided you with, it's just that whenever Frank sees a hot chick, that's the noise somebody decided to add to the sound track! It's so cartoonish, it really makes you wonder WTF!

So Frank is asked to go along with some party people he met at his hotel, and they head off into the night for some music and more libations! They end up at a club called "The Fisherman" and man, the joint is jumpin'!

The band is smokin' hot, and that's an understatement! The maniacal sax player is Van Streeter! Van led a group called Von Streeter and his Wig Poppers! He's joined on stage by Cake Witchard on drums, the amazing Shifty Henry on bass, Ray Laurie on the piano and Teddy (Hush, Hush Sweet Charlotte) Buckner on trumpet! Believe it or don't, the raucous music they created wasn't even good enough for the producer who overdubbed another band led by Maxwell Davis! What a krazy world!!

Here's yet another far-out fact! That krazy kat digging the music in a small bit part was none other that Hugh (Wyatt Earp) O'Brian! "The Life And Legend Of Wyatt Earp" was just a small footnote in Hugh's career, but it went on for 227 episodes from 1955 to 1961!  Unfreakingbelievable!

So, how's it feel? You just got into town, you're getting drunk with a bunch of strangers, and one guy's wife is hanging onto you like a starfish on a pier! The air's starting to get a little thick!

Then some super mysterious mofo shows up, and slips something weird into your glass, unbeknownst to you!

Gee, this drinks tastes kinda funny! Hey, Bartender bring me another drink, and wash the glass this time!

Frank Bigelow wakes up the next morning feeling like shit, and he's got some kind of gut feeling that this isn't your run of the mill hangover!

Frank feels bad enough that he goes to see a doctor, and that's when he finds out he's been poisoned by some luminous toxin that has no cure after a certain length of time! His library card has essentially expired!

Now he's got nothing better to do than try and find out what it's all about, and why it happened to him! I love this shot!!

The game is on, and Frank ends up going to L.A. where he starts to put all the clues together!

"D.O.A." is filled to the brim, and overflowing with talent! Here's the great Neville Brand as psycho henchman Chester! What do you think? Does he look just a little bit crazy? Neville was so talented, he could be a tough guy killer in one movie, and warm and fuzzy in another one!  His roles ranged everywhere from this film to "That Darn Cat," with stops in "The Twilight Zone" in the episode called "The Encounter," to 56 episodes of "Laredo" as Reese Bennett, to George Fromley as "The Mad Bomber!"

Time for one last good-bye! He knows it's the end, but she doesn't!

So there you go, "D.O.A." is one movie I don't mind telling you the ending, because, nothing has changed since the beginning of the film! Frank Bigelow is still a dead man, and this is one movie that doesn't have a happy ending!

"D.O.A." is a classic piece of film noir! I got my dvd copy for a dollar from Target, you are even luckier, and can watch or download it for free from The Internet Archive, and that's exactly what I suggest that you do immediately, if not sooner, before your time runs out too!