THE EDGAR WALLACE MYSTERY THEATRE - "The Malpas Mystery" (1967)

 

"It's Another Saturday Night And I Ain't Got Nobody" except Edgar Wallace, and I'm good with that! 

This week's Saturday Night Special is episode five of "The Edgar Wallace Mystery Theatre" from 1967 titled "The Malpas Mystery."

 

The show opens with a woman being released from prison. The women is named Audrey Bedford and was played by Maureen (The Deadly Game) Swanson.

Maureen retired from acting when she married into royalty in 1969.

At least she's not alone, because she has a not so loving stepsister named Dora, as played by Sandra (Devil Doll) Dorne. Dora's housekeeper was played by Catherine (Curse Of The Werewolf) Feller.

At first Audrey is rebuked by her stepsister, but is then welcomed when said sister gets a call.

So the two sisters go to a party where there are stupid rich people that need to be taken advantage of!

Mr. Malpas is a creepy dude who lives in a run down flat!

This guy has some pertinent information for him that's for sale!

 

Yeah, well, it doesn't exactly work that way, and the informant disappears never to be seen again until they fish his body out of the river.

This is the scary looking entrance to Malpas' place.

Up the stairs and into a weird room where Mr. Malpas shines a bright light in your face so you can't see him!

Anthony (Captain Midnight) Bate is the constable who put Audrey away, but he's also falling for her in a big way now that she's out.

Allan (The Trygon Factor) Cuthbertson is Lacey Marshalt, the neighbor of the mysterious Mr. Malpas. He's also a scoundrel and Dora's boyfriend. He's always complaining that Malpas is strange, and there's always weird noises coming from his flat.

Not very many people in this story, or actually almost any Edgar Wallace tale, are who they pretend to be.

A seemingly dead Lacey is found in the room of Malpas, but he's not really dead!

Dora pretends to be Audrey in an effort to chisel some money out of Audrey's Dad who hasn't seen her in 20 years.

Lots of drinking, lots of smoking, and lots of mystery, and the guy you can thank for it all is my good friend Lord Litter in Berlin, just because he knows how much I dig Edgar Wallace.

I'm telling you, if you like good music, he provides more of it today than anybody I know on his radio shows!

Try it, you'll like it, and that's a guarantee!

THE THREE STOOGES In "Cactus Makes Perfect" - 1942

It's time for another Stooges adventure here at The Dungeon and get a few laffs on a Friday.

Monte Collins plays the Stooges mom, who loves them but wants to pummel them most of the time. She even does Curly's woob, woob and face wipes, fun to watch her.

The boys try and show mom how Curly's new invention, a 'gold finding' contraption, works. Well, it doesn't go well.

She tells them to go find some gold, and gives them all a swift boot to the rear to send them on their merry way!

Curly's talking about his gold finding machine and is overheard by a 'gold mine salesman' who cons them out of fifty bucks for the rights to a mine. Curly then has to pay another fifty bucks for the map!

Out in the woods, Curly fires up his machine and lets one of the gold searching arrows fly!

And, it lands square in prospector Vernon Dent's behind! Vernon is always a delight to watch in the many Stooge shorts he appeared in. Did you know he had 449 acting credits?!

The boys go searching for their arrow and see Vernon holding it. Curly says, hey, that's mine, Vernon draws his gun and starts shooting!

The boys hightail it out of there while being fired at, Curly backs into a cactus and the needles have to be pulled out one by one, and, there are lots of them!

With his last arrow, Curly ties it to his wrist so that he won't lose it, and he flies away with it, until...

He lands head first in the boarded up entrance to an old abandoned gold mine!

Moe and Larry do everything they can to get Curly extracted, but, it don't work.

So, Larry and Moe push him and he breaks through the boards and crashes to the bottom of a deep pit. Then they drop the tools down on top of him! Just what you'd expect.

After a few close quarters antics, and Moe getting conked in the head with a pick, Curly keeps getting tapped on the noggin by a wooden lever!

Curly pulls the lever down and, Jackpot!!

The boys exit the mine with their bag of gold in tow, but the two prospectors have been waiting for them. Vernon  creeps up behind Curly and is ready to snatch the gold, when, Curly swings the bag over his shoulder and bonks him on the head but good!

It gives the boys time to find a building to hide in. But the angry prospectors have followed them there and are lurking around outside.

The boys hide in a big safe and lock themselves inside, so, the prospectors drill a hole in the door and slide a lit stick of dynamite through.

The boys slide it back through the hole a few time before it finally ends up in Curly's hand, ready to explode! It fizzles out and they give a big sigh of relief...

Then, it goes off after tosses it on the floor, blowing them through the steel walls. It ends here with no resolution. Okay, class is over, go outside and play or something.

ONE MILLION YEARS B.C. - "This Is The Way It Was" (1966)

This week's Wild and Wolley Mammoth Wednesday feature is the most prehistoric film of 1966, 

"One Million Years B.C."

In 1940 they came out with "One Million B.C." and in 1969, they came out with "One Million AC/DC."

In between there was "One Million Years B.C."  

 

Looks pretty prehistoric if you ask me!

Most young men back in 1966 were not interested in seeing a movie about a bunch of sweaty, stinky cavemen, but if a movie was filled with big dinosaurs and hot chicks in furry bikinis, that was a completely different story!

 

And that's why this film stars the beautiful Raquel Welch as cave girl Loana.
 

Born in 1940 as Jo Raquel Tejada, Raquel is still looking great these days at 82 years of age!

For the monsters they brought in the world's foremost stop-action animation artist, Mr. Ray Harryhausen.

"One Million Years B.C." is basically a silent movie, except for a few names called out, and various grunts and moans.

So all Raquel has to really do is look good!

And she is very talented at looking good!

Some of the monsters are okay, but it really doesn't seem like it's Ray Harryhausen's best work!

The bonus, and the only other reason to watch this movie is the appearance of another bombshell beauty, Martine Beswick as Nupondi.

Martine is a Dungeon fave for all of her roles, including another primitive role in "Prehistoric Women" in 1967.

 

Martine was also perfect in the James Bond thriller "Thunderball."

And who could ever forget Martine for her role in "Dr. Jekyll And Sister Hyde?" 

Not me, that's for sure.

Raquel Welch is a gorgeous woman beyond a doubt!

But when it comes to sheer primal audacity, you've just got to go with this gal created by Brian James Riedel for the song by Hermanos Guzanos called

"Cavegirl Love!"