THE TWILIGHT ZONE / "The Prime Mover" - 1961

Here's a great little episode starring Dana Clark, Buddy Ebsen, Christine White, Nesdon Booth and a host of excellent co-stars. The story's about Ace Larsen, a compulsive gambler that always seems to be down on his luck when it comes to the deadly sin. But when his friend Jimbo reveals a secret to him, Ace sees a way to ultimate riches and fame... Yeah, we'll see about that.

Ace owns a small café where he had a slot machine brought in as a way to increase business but Ace keeps putting quarters in with no payout. He's desperate for a win so asks a trucker if he'd like to flip for his tab, double or nothing. The trucker says okay, Ace flips a quarter, and loses.

The trucker says thank you, takes the 'lucky' quarter and puts it in the slot machine, and what do you know... JACK POT!!

Needless to say, Ace doesn't take it very well. 

Then Ace hears tires screeching, he goes outside to see a car flip over and crash into an electrical station! I've seen this same crash in other movies, one I know for sure is in WAR OF THE SATELLITES. 

Ace has Jimbo go with him to the crash site, where, Jimbo uses telekinesis to turn the car back over. Ace cannot believe what he has just witnessed...

Ace gets Jimbo to tell him about his powers, one that he's had all his life, and, he doesn't think it's anything special. Ace sees an opening.

With Ace's girl Kitty in tow, him and Jimbo hit the strip using their secret to manipulate dice and the roulette wheel. Is that an awesome still or what?!

And they make $200,000 in one night!!

But of course, Ace has bigger plans, a way to double his money. He contacts a few mob members and invites them over to play dice.

After checking things out, the boys are in, but, they're playing with the boss's dice.

Ace has hired the cigarette girl to be his girl, and he's winning like crazy. It's down to the last roll and Jimbo interrupts him, it's important.. But Ace just ignores him and tosses the dice...

OOPS!!

Ace is thinking... Wha' hoppin'??

Later Ace and Jimbo have a hoot after what they had been through, just ran out of gas!

Knocked back to reality, Ace sees the errors of his ways, and gets rid of the slot machine. Come on you guys, move it!!

Great ending with Jimbo showing us he's still got it, he did it for the better.

THE SCI-FI AND MONSTER MOVIE POSTERS OF REYNOLD BROWN (1955 - 1960)

 

In 1994 they made a movie called "The Man Who Drew The Bug-Eyed Monsters." It was a documentary about a truly astounding artiste named Reynold Brown, who was responsible for creating many of the everlasting movie posters from Science Fiction and Monster Movies of the 1950's and 60's.

 

 

This Saturday Night Special is dedicated to that man! Prepare to be amazed!

Let's get started with the classic "Creature From The Black Lagoon" from 1955.

We've shown you many of these posters before, mostly because of the studio, but not the artist, who for the most part, always stayed sinfully uncredited!

 

Just keep reminding yourself that this is all the work of one man, because it really is a little bit hard to believe! Again in 1955, here's the poster from "Revenge Of The Creature."

 

Another from 1955, here's Reynold's poster for "Tarantula!" I like the weird double spacing on the stars names they did to get the composition right. Reynold paid great attention to the expressions on all the little people in the background, but the posters were printed so cheaply, a lot of his detail was lost!

 

 

Still from 1955, here's "This Island Earth," a color film that deserved an even more colorful poster. Reynold's compositions are starting to also get busier.

Probably one of the reasons that Reynold could paint such good flying saucers was because "during World War II he worked as a technical artist at North American Aviation."

 

In more than one instance Reynold's poster art was more exciting that the actual movie. "Curucu, Beast Of The Amazon" from 1956 is a perfect example!

 

This is how cool Curucu could have really looked!
 

 1957 was a big year for Reynold like this killer poster from "The Deadly Mantis."

Reynold did not only paint posters for the monster movies, he did over three hundred, and many of them were for mainstream films like "The Alamo."

 

 

Small or tall, Reynold got the call, and every one of these films is a classic! Again in 1957, he did the poster for "The Incredible Shrinking Man." And never forget this was long before the internet or Photoshop, and this all had to come out of the mind of one man!

What a great poster for the 1957 film "The Land Unknown." Actually a whole lot of kids were pretty disappointed seeing movies like this after seeing a dynamic poster like this one.

Now this is one of my favorites from 1957, "The Monolith Monsters." The movie is wack, and this poster of Reynold's explodes with excitement. It's almost three dimensional! I need to take a break, I think I'll go watch it for a while right now!

This poster for the 1957 adventure film "The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent," aka "Viking Women And The Sea Serpent," is ten times more exciting than the movie. 

 

You'd think that would probably be enough for most people, but Reynold was just getting started, and 1958 was really a banter year for him!

Is there a more classic poster than "Attack Of The 50 Ft. Woman?" Maybe, but it's debatable!
 

From attacks by giant women to puppet people, there was no stopping Reynold!

Again in 1958, this was the poster from "Attack Of The Puppet People."
 

 

This "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" poster also from 1958 was a beaut!

Believe it or not, Reynold didn't really like making these monster movie posters that much. It was just a job to him, that considering everything, didn't even pay that well, but that didn't stop him from putting his all into each and every one of them, many times to find his artwork chopped up by some art director.

 

 

What kid in 1958 wouldn't want to go see "Monster On The Campus" after viewing this poster?

Reynold developed this style where the images popped out at you, almost in 3D. This 1959 "Atomic Submarine" poster is a good example of that.

 

Some of Reynold's early work was drawing cartoons, then he turned to illustrating magazines with artwork like this, and his work also appears on the covers of a score of paperback books!
 

This 1959 poster from William Castle's "House On Haunted Hill" is way beyond classic!
 

By 1960, the face of horror was changing, and the films based on the tales of Edgar Allan Poe became a popular subject. This "House Of Usher" poster is as equally amazing as the monster posters were.

Also in 1960, the Italian horror films like "Black Sunday" were becoming very popular, and Reynold came up with this incredible imagery.

By 1970, the movies were becoming too sexy and violent, and Reynold decided after creating the poster for "The Dunwich Horror," that he had just had enough, and he went back to doing the art that he loved, painting cowboys, and enjoying life as best he could.

To find out everything they never taught you in school or history class, go to

The Reynold Brown Website

where you can find out so much more about this great man and gifted artist!

OSWALD THE RABBIT In "The Merry Old Soul" - 1933

Here's a Walter Lantz cartoon starring Oswald The Lucky Rabbit. In this one, our little guy has to cheer up Old King Cole, who gots da blues!

Get ready for the old bait and switcheroonie. Oswald is at the dentist office but the tooth to be pulled is giving the dentist a tough time.

The dentist has a solution to the problem?  It's anesthesia time!

Oswald wakes up after being knocked and hears on the radio that Old King Cole has the blues. Being a rabbit of action, Oswald sounds the alarm to his Hollywood celebrity friends!

You can carry more stars with a fire truck, ya silly!

At the king's palace , the court jester tries to get the king to laugh at his silly antics to no avail, look at that long face!

Then Oswald shows up with all his pals, time to turn that frown upside down!

Oswald opens the Mother Goose Song Book, that should do the trick!

The cow tried to jump over the Moon but didn't quite make it, nice bloomers!

This Little Bo Peep gag leaves me speechless.

Even Mae West gets into the act... Oswald stares at Mae's spectacular backside the whole time she sings the Humpty Dumpty song!

But, Old King Cole doesn't break out of his shell until Laurel and Hardy start giving  a pie-in-the-face demonstration...

And things get a little out of hand...

And the flying pie race is on!!

Unlike his brothers, you can see that Groucho ducked when a pie was tossed at him, but as he's having a laugh about his cleverness, yeah, he gets a pie in the face.

The court jester gets some advise from his dark side, like, HEY, THESE GUYS ARE TRYING TO TAKE YER JOB!

So, the jester pulls Oswald down into the cellar.

There, he chokes our little pal with a noose! (Jeez!)

Like I was saying, Oswald's actually still knocked out as the dentist pulls with all his might, and the damn tooth finally lets go.

No wonder it was so hard to remove, the tooth was connected to his shoes!! This cartoon is no where as crazy as the real world is nowadays.