THE GREAT LAND OF SMALL / Les Productions La Fête Inc. - 1987

Here's a weird little flick I transferred from VHS a few years ago, so, it must be time to check it out! It's a Canadian movie about two children that enter a fantasy kingdom where they are confronted by evil forces. Not that complicated...

I've got a little sound clip from this movie for your approval, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button over by our bag of fool's gold dust, NOW, Rufus The Gnat!.. Here's a sample of... THE GREAT LAND OF SMALL!

The story starts at a circus where mom explains to her two kids where they came from! Not really, she's doing some stretching before she practices her act.

Michael J. Anderson plays Fritz, the king of Small. Now, if you ever wanted to know about a super interesting person in film, well, this is your guy!! Just a couple of things about this amazing 3' 7" man... He was born in Huron, South Dakota, on Halloween night in 1953 with the disease Osteogenesis Imperfecta and grew up in a wheelchair, worked for Martin Marietta, troubleshooting NASA computers in ground-support systems of the space shuttle, was the backwards-talking dream figure on the cult TV series TWIN PEAKS and worked on the experimental performance piece 'Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Brokenhearted' for David Lynch.

Here's the guy that ends up with gold dust but his name's not Dustin! A little note, our hero wrassler Dusty Rhodes just died last week on June 11th...

Here's the thing, cross over through the rainbow and you enter The Great Land Of Small!

I dunno, I just don't think that The Great Land Of Small is actually all that great!

With limited budgets, people have to be creative, that's what I always say. Look at this shot, it's like, see what you can come up with at the dump when you're in charge of set design..

Here are people going into this modern looking concert hall, they have tickets to see...

THE CRAZY WORLD OF ARTHUR BROWN!!.. "I am the god of Hell fire and I bring you.. Fire, I'll take you to burn, fire, I'll take you to learn, I'll see you burn!"

Anywho, the dude with the dust causes the volcano to shoot off fireworks as our heroine tries to stop him. He shoots a burst of colorful plasma at her and...

Knocks her on her ass!.. Not to worry, the good guys win, and, we're back tomorrow with more from... The Dungeon!!

HAPPY DAYS - Ub Iwerks & Carl Stalling (1936)

Here's a little information for all you Blogger neophytes! If you're an html moron like I am, and you're writing a post like this one, there are certain scary unknown places where you can hit control Z to undo something, and it totally wipes out your whole post, and as far as I can discern, there is no redo at that point! It's a real pisser when you've just spent a couple of hours on something, and you have to do it all again! Not only is the fire gone, but a lot of the ideas are also gone forever, and that's exactly what happened when I was working on this one, and that's something that will really test your meddle!

Lucky for me, this time it was only a cartoon, so.....
"Happy Days" are here again!  
The music was created by the immortal Carl Stalling, a man with an incredible 760 credits!
You're probably familiar with some of Ub Iwerks many cartoons, but later in his career, he was also the special photographic advisor for movies like Walt Disney's "The Parent Trap," and Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds!" Iwerks and Stalling, the original dream team!

When was the last time you saw a group of neighborhood kids out digging for worms so they could all go fishing? I'm thinking like never!

This scene was one big joke, the golfer says fore, but the kid says five, because that's how many worms he found in the golfer's divot, and so the banter goes back and forth, again and again!

Quite the bargain, but I'm still not sure about the ethics of selling a car to a bunch of grammar school kids!

The car is such a piece of crap, the mechanic pushes it to make it go! The naive kids are really impressed with the speed they're traveling!

The tires are all flat, so the kid known as Pinhead volunteers to air them up!

But this is what happens when helium is substituted for compressed air! As a point of reference, here's a song that Hermanos Guzanos recorded over 25 years ago called "Helium Man!"

The flying car is not recognized as friendly and the authorities attempt to shoot it down!

Pinhead finally catches a fish the hard way!

This last shot reminds me of an ink drawing Tabonga made in high school of a bunch of little butts releasing gas!

HOUSE OF HORRORS / Universal Pictures - 1946

It's a hot and humid summer day, here at the Dungeon... Anyway, here's a rare treat for us, all about a struggling expressionist sculptor who enlists the aid the notorious Creeper to model for his newest creation and to pay back the critics who rebuffed his work.

I have a sound clip for your approval, sooooo, you can push the big red 'GO' button located there by our mad sculpture lab, NOW, Ralphie The Tarantula!.. Here's... HOUSE OF HORRORS!

Here's sculptor Marcel De Lange played by Martin Kosleck, he's having dinner with his little pal. My little pals like to lay right in the middle of everything when I'm working on my art. Martin was also in Dungeon favorites like THE MUMMY'S CURSE, THE FROZEN GHOST, THE FLESH EATERS and AGENT FOR H.A.R.M.

After being insulted by an art critic and losing a sale, Marcel grabs a big old knife and chases the two out of his studio. He's so distraught that he plans on committing suicide at the docks...

But, as luck (or unluck) would have it, Marcel rescues The Creeper from the drink instead. He helps him to his studio and brings him breakfast and tells him of his plan to use him as a model for a new sculpture.

Here are Virginia Grey and Alan Napier as reporter Joan Medford and her editor, F. Holmes Harmon. She's interested in the Creeper case...

Here's glamor artist Steven Morrow working on a piece with his model. Robert Lowery plays the artist and Joan's boyfriend.

Marcel sics Rondo on this art critic in his paisley smoking jacket!

Meanwhile, Marcel is hard at work on this large bust of the Creeper...

Joan has stolen the sketch of the Creeper to give to the newspaper, but unfortunately, Rondo was hiding in the background and saw her take it. When she returns to see Marcel, the big guy rats her out!

But, in the heat of the moment, Rondo turns on Marcel and finishes him off over the sculpture, then goes after Joan...

The police have arrived and shoot the Creeper through the window, bringing our tale to a sad end. Check back in on Wednesday for more from The Dungeon gang!

TODSCHÜSSE AM BROADWAY - Peter Thomas - "Broadways Deadly Gold" (1969)

Welcome to the lucky Saturday the 13th version of The Dungeon! Just like Lord Litter, I think these Jerry Cotton films are some of my favourites of the 60's spy and secret agent genres! In the all around weird but well done department, it just doesn't get much better than this!

Whether you call it "Broadway's Deadly Gold" or, "Todesschüsse Am Broadway," or "Dead Body On Broadway," it really doesn't make much difference, because it's still one strange movie, no matter what the name is!

Here's the man of the hour, George Nader as FBI Agent Jerry Cotton! This was to be George's 8th, and last appearance as Jerry Cotton, a run than went on from 1965 to 1969!

These two shots personify what a topsy turvy movie this really is! "Round and round we go, one, two, three, kick! One, two, three, Jump!"

"Todesschüsse Am Broadway" can be quite atmospheric at times!

Miha (Stronghold Of Toughs) Bolah is Joe Costello, one extremely bad mutha! He's after the gold, and the cops are after him so he just had his face redone so he couldn't be recognized! This is how he paid the people for their handiwork! There just had to be a dance studio for amateur strippers to flesh out the script! Most of the Jerry Cotton films are shot in Germany, but disguised to look like places in America. This one had some scenes actually shot in Las Vegas in the days when accordion players could still command the stage! This is just the way Director Harald Reinl and Cinematographer Heinz Hölscher roll, and it always makes for fun watching!   Heidy Bohlen as Cindy Holden is the item that everybody is looking for, and the whole movie is spent with different groups pursuing her because as the girlfriend of the dead guy who stashed the gold, all the other players naturally assume she knows where it is, but she really doesn't! Heidy was in some films with dubious titles like "Naughty Roommates," and "The Sensuous Three," and in some film called "The Long Swift Sword Of Siegfried" she was credited as Heidy Ho! Gotta love it! FBI agents Jerry Cotton and his partner Phil Decker set up a surveillance camera in Cindy's apartment so they can keep and eye on her! Phil really enjoys his job! Phil Decker was played by Heinz Weiss in all the Jerry Cotton films! Naturally Cindy is also a nightclub performer or else it wouldn't be a Jerry Cotton flick! One of my favourite composers Peter Thomas wrote the music, but this song performed by Cindy Holden is one of THE worst songs I've ever heard! Worse even than the music in "Manos: The Hands Of Fate," and that's really saying something! Check it out right here if you don't believe me! Whoohoohahoohoo! Joe Costello is possibly the most dispicable person on the face of the planet! While trying to escape the pursuing Jerry Cotton, he abducts this kid, and then ditches him in a truck after pulling the pin on a grenade and handing it to him! What a guy! The kid was either a really good actor or actually really scared! I just had to show you this still of the residents of the apartment building where Costello kidnapped the kid! They're watching them go down in an elevator! Jerry Cotton tries to do a police sketch of Joe Costello's new face without much luck! IF you think this is a real place, you'd be sorely mistaken! This bunch of bozos are also pursuing both Joe Costello and Cindy Holden! They're a pretty tight group, literally! So what do you think about the composition of these two shots? Pretty jagged huh?! In the big standoff between Jerry Cotton and Joe Costello, Costello threatens to smash Cindy's head in, and that might just be about as much as Jerry can handle! All the Jerry Cotton films are available from Sinister Cinema at a very fair price. They've got a heckuva deal going on for the next couple of months! 12 movies for $98.00 postpaid! Can't go wrong there! Knock three times on the green door, and tell 'em Eegah!! sent you!! They don't pay me (I wish they did) but they deserve the plug because they do a good job!