Category: TV

RIP: Allan Melvin

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I just discovered via Mark Evanier’s site that Allan Melvin passed away last Thursday. While you may not know his name, I’ll bet you’ll know his face. Melvin was probably best known as “Sam the Butcher” from the Brady Bunch, but there was a time when Melvin was, as Mark Evanier states, “in everything.”
Melvin appeared repeatedly on “The Phil Silvers Show,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Andy Griffith Show” [my favorite Melvin guest roles], “Gomer Pyle,” “Lost in Space,” “All in the Family” and so many more shows. He made every show he was on just a little bit better just by being there.Mr. Melvin was 84 years old and is survived by his wife, his daughter, his grandson and many fans. My thoughts and prayers go out to them all.

Marx Best of the West

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Boy, did the tv commercial below bring back some great memories. When I was a kid growing up in the 60’s, I loved my action figures. My favorites were General Custer, Johnny West and Chief Cherokee all from Marx’s Best of the West Series. Hard to believe how many hours I spent playing with them… and my guess is kids today would enjoy them if we could pry them away from their video games.


 

RIP: Maila "Vampira" Nurmi

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Maila Nurmi, better known as Vampira, passed away yesterday at the age of 86. Although few would recognize Ms. Nurmi’s name, almost everyone knows her “Vampira” character.
Maila Nurmi was born in Finland, but moved to the US with her family while still in her teens. Maila dreamed of stardom on the silver screen and headed for Hollywood.  Although romantically linked to Marlon Brando, Orson Welles and even James Dean, it was a masquerade ball in 1954 that led to her pop culture iconic status. Maila attended dressed as Mortica Addams [from Charles Addams New Yorker cartoons which later became the basis for the popular Addams Family tv series]. Maila won the contest by beating out nearly 2,000 other contestants.
Maila made such an impact that several months later she was offered the role as host of KABC’s late Saturday night horror movies. With a few costume modifications and new name, Vampira was born! Maila and the show were an instant hit and provided the framework for all of the horror hosts that would follow. Vampira was profiled in Life and Newsweek [within a month of each other] and Maila began guesting on nationally syndicated shows. She was even nominated as the “Most Outstanding Female Personality of 1954” by the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.Judging by her impact on popular culture, you’d probably think that Vampira’s horror host role lasted years, immediately led to movies, comics, and more — but you’d be wrong. Despite the show being a smash hit,.it lasted just over a year. Some say that Maila was difficult to work with, while others say that the FCC and network blackballed her due to her on-air comments and double entendres.

Maila did make appearances in a few movies after her tv show was cancelled; most notably Ed Wood’s infamous “Plan 9 From Outer Space.” Maila left show business in the early 60’s, but her spirit lived on through the antics of dozens of other horror hosts such as Zacherley, Sammy Terry, and even Elvira [who was later unsuccessfully sued by Maila]. With the growth of the goth movement, the “popularity” of “Plan 9” and Tim Burton’s “Ed Wood” film, Maila enjoyed renewed popularity in her later years.

It appears that Maila died leaving behind no family members. Our thoughts and prayers go out to her friends and many fans.

Man Law for Clean House?

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This post will probably surprise many ZONErs who swing by here to read the latest manly post about movies [action, crime, horror], novels [tough guy authors like Huston, Vachss, Morrell], comic books [Sin City, Walking Dead, 100 Bullets] or sports [da Bears, UFC]. You see, I’ve been hooked on a tv show that I just discovered. It’s called Clean House.Yeah,
Clean House. It’s not about a bar-room brawler, or a mafia hitman. No… it’s about a team of “experts” that go into a house that’s cluttered beyond belief and whip it back into shape. They weed out stuff to sell, give away and even a few things to keep. They hold a yard sale and then take the money raised [plus a thousand bucks kicked in by the show] and redo several rooms in the house [while the home owners are sent away for the night]. The show concludes with the big reveal: we and the homeowners get to see what the Clean House experts have done. Usually the new digs are really cool.I’ve been DVRing the episodes and watching a couple a night. I can get through them pretty quickly and they are giving me some ideas about things to do around the Zablo estate. So, can we get a Man Law passed that Clean House is okay to watch?

When Magicians Collide

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Are any ZONErs watching the magic reality show Phenomenon? If so, and you were watching last night, you saw Criss Angel throw down a million dollar challenge to one of the contestants as well as his co-host Uri Geller. More on that in a second… I watched the first episode of Phenomenon and found it to be boring. I like good magic. Unfortunately the show didn’t deliver. Further I didn’t care for the co-hosts Uri Geller and Criss Angel. I guess it’s because they’re too hokey… not hokey like a guy who does magic as a hobby, but hokey in that they take themselves so seriously. Give me magicians like Penn and Teller or even David Blaine. I felt that the show was headed for early cancellation and I stopped watching.

If I had have tuned in last night I would have seen Criss Angel and Jim Callahan almost come to blows. After spiritualist Jim Callahan performed his act, both Geller and Angel were supposed to critique it. Angel called the performance “comical.” Angel then pulled out two small sealed envelopes and offered Geller and Callahan each one million dollars of his own money if either of them could say what was in the envelopes.Callahan became visibly upset and began to repeatedly call Angel an “ideological bigot” as he walked toward him. Angel got out of his seat and walked toward Callahan taunting him to tell what was in the envelope. The two were separated and the show went to commercial.

Sure, Callahan doesn’t really communicate with the dead to find out that the item in the box is a toy car and the only way he can present the message is through a painful psychic experience where the answer comes to him written so it must be read in a mirror. Then again, Angel doesn’t really walk on water, split women in half, or levitate.

For Angel to call out Callahan on national tv to prove he’s a fake is stupid. Pot meet kettle.

Then again, maybe it was a set-up between Callahan and Angel to help hype the show. If that’s the case the show is in worse shape than I thought and I know neither Angel or Callahan have enough magical powers to save it.

 

24 Trailer [Beware Spoilers Below]

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24 always manages to entertain. After watching this trailer for season seven [which doesn’t start until January 2008], I have mixed feelings. On one hand, the show has always been one of my favorites [even with the cougar trap incident and last season Jack killing Curtis]… still, I hope that bringing Tony Almeda back as the main bad guy doesn’t signal the jumping of the shark!

Dark Shadows Memories

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It’s hard to believe that it’s been 40 years since the addition of Barnabas Collins made “Dark Shadows” THE show for horror fans. I was only 8 years old, but I remember the thrill of tuning in each weekday to see vampires, werewolves, ghosts, and more.The popularity of “Dark Shadows” carried over to comics, novelizations and even a couple of movies. Johnny Depp is gearing up to play Barnabas Collins in a new version of “Dark Shadows” and I’m looking forward to that.

Prison Break is Back

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Anyone catch the season premiere of “Prison Break”? Now in it’s third season, “Prison Break” continues to entertain and offer some of the best commercial break cliffhangers on tv. It’s pretty amazing how well the writers are able to weave the storylines of the various characters so that they continue to interact despite being on the run and separated over the course of two seasons. The show is well cast and well acted. The writing and pace are such that I’m willing to suspend disbelief and just enjoy the world in which the Scofield brothers exist.

And special mention has to be given to Robert Knepper as Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell. Is there a more hated character on television now? He’s so bad, he’s good.

New TV Season

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The new TV Season is almost upon us. Let’s see what’s worth watching.

SUNDAY
This looks to be one of the weakest nights of all. At 8pm I’ll tune into NBC’s Sunday Night Football while my wife will head into the bedroom to watch ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition followed by Desperate Housewives. No new show looks to be worth the effort on Sunday.

MONDAY
From famine to feast, Monday is loaded with good programing. My guess is, from 8-9pm, we’ll watch Prison Break [FOX] and record Dancing with the Stars [my wife will watch it later while I’m otherwise engaged, thank God]. At 9 we’ll leave it on FOX to catch the new series K-Ville, which has the potential to be very, very good. At 10pm we’ll switch over to the premiere of Journeyman on NBC.

TUESDAY
I doubt that it can be as good as the commercials, but at 8pm I’ll give ABC’s new series Cavemen while recording Bones [FOX] for my wife. I’m hearing good things about CW’s [CW??] Reaper so we’ll watch that and record ABC’s Dancing with the Stars Results show. Then at 10 it’s Boston Legal on ABC. [Denny Crane! Denny Crane!]

WEDNESDAY
Wednesday starts at 8:30 with FOX’s ‘Til Death. At 9 we stay in place for Kitchen Nightmares [more Gordon Ramsey! LOL!]. At 10pm I’ll swing over to ABC to check out Dirty, Sexy Money.

THURSDAY
For years Thursday was the best night of the week for tv, now the only thing I’m checking out is Survivor on CBS.

FRIDAY
Unless something interesting is featured on ABC’s 20/20 at 8pm I won’t turn on the tube until 9pm when I check out Moonlight on CBS about a vampire private eye.

I’ll just be glad when 24 and The Shield return…

And Still No Wild, Wild West

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Time magazine has come up with their 100 All-Time Best TV Shows. Using their picks only, I whittled it down to my top 25 [listed below]. It’s a bit different from the list using Classic TV’s Top 100, and disappointing in that neither list allowed me the chance to have The Wild, Wild West in my picks.So without further delay, in alphabetical order, my top 25 All-Time Best TV Shows based on Time Magazine’s Top 100:

24
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
American Idol
Bob Newhart Show, The
Cheers
Cosby Show, The
Dick Van Dyke Show, The
Hill Street Blues
Honeymooners, The
I Love Lucy
Leave it to Beaver
Lost
Mary Tyler Moore Show, The
Monkees, The
Oprah
Sanford and Son
Seinfeld
Shield, The
Sopranos, The
Star Trek
Survivor
Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,
Twilight Zone, The
West Wing, The
Wiseguy

Top 100 [25] TV Shows

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I’m a sucker for lists and Classic TV’s “List of the Top 100 Shows” sucked me in. Ultimately I whittled the list down to the 25 shows that I’d like to see right now. Basically, these are my favorites on the list, but the order could be argued after the top ten or so. Of course they left out some classics like “The Wild, Wild West” but you go with what they give ya…

So here’s my top 25:

Seinfeld (NBC, 1990-98)
Star Trek (NBC, 1966-69)
The Honeymooners (CBS, 1955-56)
The Twilight Zone (CBS, 1959-65)
I Love Lucy (CBS, 1951-61)
The Dick Van Dyke Show (CBS, 1961-66)
Leave it to Beaver (CBS/ABC, 1957-63)
Frasier (NBC, 1993-Present)
Cheers (NBC, 1983-93)
The Andy Griffith Show (CBS, 1960-68)
The Cosby Show (NBC, 1984-92)
The Mary Tyler Moore Show (CBS, 1970-77)
Hill Street Blues (NBC, 1981-87)
Barney Miller (ABC, 1975-82)
The Bob Newhart Show (CBS, 1972-78)
The Carol Burnett Show (CBS, 1967-79)
The Monkees (NBC, 1966-68)
Miami Vice (NBC, 1984-89)
ER (NBC, 1994-Present)
Happy Days (ABC, 1974-84)
The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS, 1948-71)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents (CBS/NBC, 1955-65)
Batman (ABC, 1966-68)
Lost in Space (CBS, 1965-68)
The Rockford Files (NBC, 1974-80)

RIP: Merv Griffin

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A few minutes ago it came over the wires that Merv Griffin had passed away from prostate cancer at the age of 82. Mr. Griffin started out as a singer, but really hit it big with his self-titled talk show which ran for more than 20 years. He is also known for being the creative genius behind two of television’s most popular and longest running game shows “Jeopardy” and “Wheel of Fortune.”
Growing up, I enjoyed watching The Merv Griffin Show. Merv always seemed like a down-to-earth guy who was having fun hanging out with the celebrities joining him for the day. He was a true success story. Our thoughts and prayers go out to his family, friends and fans.

Kurt Sutter: “Awaken the Dragon” and “Forever Sam Crow”

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A couple of posts down Rafael Kayanan mentioned the Enter the Dragon re-make that Kurt Sutter is going to write and direct for Warner Bros. Since I hadn’t heard anything about this, I decided to find out the scoop.
Kurt Sutter is an executive producer, writer and occasional actor on The Shield.  Sutter told Variety that he’s..
…‘writing “Awaken the Dragon” as a contemporized drama about a lone FBI agent who pursues a rogue Shaolin monk into the bloody world of underground martial arts fight clubs.’
Enter the Dragon  is one of my all-time favorite films. I love Sutter’s work on The Shield  and have no problems with him updating, re-making or re-imagining Enter the Dragon.  If his movie is great, then it will bring more awareness to the original. If his movie tanks, it doesn’t change anything with the Bruce Lee classic.
Sounds like a win-win situation for us action fans especially if Sutter’s FX pilot Forever Sam Crow  [a drama set in the “world of outlaw motorcycle clubs] is picked up.