Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
Twilight Zone: “The 7th is Made Up of Phantoms” [Season 5, Episode 10]
Original Air Date: December 6, 1963
Director: Alan Crosland, Jr.
Writer: Rod Serling
Starring: Ron Foster, Warren Oates, Randy Boone, and Greg Morris.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Three modern-day soldiers on National Guard training near the location of the Battle of the Little Big Horn see increasing signs of hostile Indians.
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Stacy Conradt and Mental_Floss present 10 Slapstick Facts About the First Three Stooges Short. Here are three of my favorites…
2.THEIR SALARY FOR STARRING WAS $1000 PER WEEK—SPLIT THREE WAYS.
After their third short, Men in Black, was nominated for an Oscar, the comedians’ pay was increased to $7500 weekly. But they still had to split it amongst themselves.
3. THEY DON’T PLAY LARRY, CURLY, AND MOE.
Woman Haters marks one of the few times the Stooges play characters other than themselves. Larry plays “Jim,” Moe is “Tom,” and Curly is “Jack.”
8. IT FEATURED A COUPLE OF FAMOUS CURLY FIRSTS.
Curly’s first “nyuk-nyuk-nyuk” was in this film, as well as his first “woo-woo-woo-woo,” but they’re not quite the refined versions we’re used to now. Curly borrowed the latter catchphrase from comedian Hugh Herbert, though Herbert’s version was a little softer and more subdued.
Twilight Zone: “Probe 7: Over and Out” [Season 5, Episode 9]
Original Air Date: November 29, 1963
Director: Ted Post
Writer: Rod Serling
Starring: Richard Basehart, Antoinette Bower and Harold Gould.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Things are dire for Astronaut Adam Cook. He has crash-landed on a remote planet and there is no chance for a rescue craft since back home there has been a nuclear armageddon. Cook is prepared for life alone on this remote planet when he meets the sole-surviving female another world.
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Matthew Jackson and Mental_Floss present 11 Terrifying Facts About The Hills Have Eyes. Here are three of my favorites…
1. IT WAS BASED ON A TRUE STORY.
According to writer/director Wes Craven, The Hills Have Eyes was inspired by the story of Sawney Bean, the head of wild Scottish clan who murdered and cannibalized numerous people during the Middle Ages. Craven heard the story of the Bean clan, and noted that the road near where they lived was believed to be haunted because people kept disappearing while traveling on it. He adapted the story to instead be about a group of wild people in the American West, and The Hills Have Eyes was born.
8. MICHAEL BERRYMAN CONSTANTLY FACED HEATSTROKE.1-
Berryman, who became a horror icon thanks to this film, was apparently game for just about anything Craven and company wanted him to do, though he personally told the producers he was born with “26 birth defects.” Among those birth defects was a lack of sweat glands, which meant that the intense desert heat was particularly hazardous to his health. He soldiered on, though, even in intense action sequences.
“We always had to cover him up as soon as we finished these scenes,” Craven recalled.
11. IT STARTED AN INTERESTING CHAIN OF HORROR HOMAGES.
The Hills Have Eyes is admired by fellow horror filmmakers, so much so that one of them—Evil Dead director Sam Raimi—chose to pay homage to it in a strange way. In the scene in which Brenda is quivering in bed after having been brutalized by Pluto and Mars, a ripped poster for Steven Spielberg’s Jaws is visible above her head. Raimi saw it as a message.
“I took it to mean that Wes Craven … was saying ‘Jaws was just pop horror. What I have here isreal horror.’”
As a joking response to the scene, Raimi put a ripped poster for The Hills Have Eyes in his now-classic film The Evil Dead (1981). Not to be outdone, Craven responded by including a clip from The Evil Dead in his classic A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).
Twilight Zone: “Uncle Simon” [Season 5, Episode 8]
Original Air Date: November 15, 1963
Director: Don Siegal
Writer: Rod Serling
Starring: Cedric Hardwicke, Constance Ford and Ian Wolfe.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Frumpy Barbara Polk [Ford] has been taking care of her wealthy but mean Uncle Simon for years. She can’t wait for him to pass on so she can really live. Soon enough Uncle Simon dies in a fall but things don’t turn out quite as Barbara planned.
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If you’re not following Rafael Kayanan on Twitter, then you’re missing out on cool art like the werewolves drawing above. I say that not because Raf is an old buddy of mine, but because he’s one of the most talented artists [as in martial and art-art] out there!
Twilight Zone: “The Old Man in the Cave” [Season 5, Episode 7]
Original Air Date: November 1, 1963
Director: Alan Crosland, Jr.
Writer: Rod Serling based on a story by Henry Slesar
Starring: James Coburn, John Anderson and Josie Lloyd.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Years after a nuclear holocaust a small band of town folk survive thanks to an old man who lives in the cave. When a small band of soldiers arrive to take over the town, they demand to meet the old man which is something everyone will live to regret.
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Rob Hunter and Film School Rejects present 30 Things We Learned from the Planet Terror Commentary. Here are three of my favorites…
7. Bruce Willis enjoyed his time on Sin City so much that he told Rodriguez “any time, any where, I’ll come make anything with you.” The director called his bluff and convinced him to play the bad guy here knowing it would only be two days work. Tarantino visited the set — both to say hi and because he shot some 2nd unit for the film — and was surprised to Willis in costume.
Twilight Zone: “Living Doll” [Season 5, Episode 6]
Original Air Date: November 1, 1963
Director: Richard C. Sarafian
Writer: Charles Beaumont
Starring: Telly Savalas, Mary LaRoche and Tracy Stratford.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
Erich Streator [Savalas] becomes concerned when his stepdaughter’s new talking doll repeatedly tells him she plans to kill him.
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Cheryl Eddy and io9 present 10 Things You Might Not Know About John Carpenter’s Cult Classic They Live. Here are three of my favorites…
1) Before they met, Carpenter was a Piper fan, but Piper had never heard of the director, even though his filmography at the time included such high-profile works as Halloween, Escape From New York, The Thing, and Big Trouble in Little China.
2) The greatest fight scene in movie history runs five minutes and 20 seconds long. It took three days to film, but a month and a half of rehearsing in the backyard behind Carpenter’s office in the San Fernando Valley. According to interviews on the They Live Blu-ray, Carpenter drew inspiration for the clash from a similarly memorable brawl in The Quiet Man, a 1952 John Ford film in which John Wayne plays a retired boxer.
10) “Frank Armitage,” credited as They Live’s screenwriter, is actually a Carpenter pseudonym. It’s a shout-out to H.P. Lovecraft creation Henry Armitage; Carpenter would later pay further tribute to the author with the filmIn the Mouth of Madness. (“Frank Armitage” is also the name of David’s character in the film.)
Tomorrow is Free Comic Book Day and my buddy, John Beatty is going to be in Melbourne Florida at Famous Faces and Funnies signing autographs, doing free quickie head sketches, selling prints and more. Big John won’t be the only artist there sketching.
I’m going to show up in the afternoon too. Although I won’t be sketching so consider yourself lucky.
Twilight Zone: “The Last Night of a Jockey” [Season 5, Episode 5]
Original Air Date: October 25, 1963
Director: Joseph M. Newman
Writer: Rod Serling
Starring: Mickey Rooney.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
A jockey [Rooney] recently banned from racing for fixing races and drugging horses gets his wish answered.
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Steranko is one of the living legends of comic art. Marvel in a very wise move brought Steranko back in 2016 to create never-before-seen variant covers, like the art for one above. The variants ran through 2017.
Twilight Zone: “A Kind of Stopwatch” [Season 5, Episode 4]
Original Air Date: October 18, 1963
Director: John Rich
Writer: Rod Serling from a story by Michael D. Rosenthal
Starring: Richard Erdman, Herbie Faye and Leon Belasco.
The Overview: Beware of Spoilers…
A man gets a stopwatch that freezes time and everyone and everything in the world around him. He decides to rob a bank by stopping time and just walking away with the money. What could go wrong?
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Diversions of the Groovy Kind has posted up Master of Kung Fu #60 The Phoenix Gambit Part II: End Game! by Doug Moench, Mike Zeck, and John Tartaglione.
Click over and check out some vintage Mike Zeck art!
