One Day at a Time
Return of The Dust To Dawn Horrorthon!
Erratum, according to the advertisement it's actually a HORRO-THON and we all know a HORRO-THON beats a horrorthon any day. However these weren't just any days though, these were the early 70's when Drive-Ins were cultural meccas, bastions of high B-Movie art and (S)Exploitatation cinema. They were also the forum in which contests of sheer human will were staged- the movie marathon. Check out this page from Scary Monsters Magazine #49 which compiles an assortment of back in the day double features and beyond from the Chicagoland area. If you're like me (God forbid) the nostalgic side of you probably wishes to go back in time to partake in these glorious creep-fest campaigns, but lets face it they were staged at drive-ins and it was the seventies; we'd probably be too wasted to get out of the car trunk let alone watch any of these features in their entirety. Nowadays, thanks to the interwebs and You Tube connected flat panels, we can recreate these Champagne of Beer filled days and stage our own fright fests in the comfort of our own living rooms just like George Jetson will in the near future. Our first stop will be "Women of the Prehistoric Planet"....
Happy Batman Day Fair Citizens of Gotham!
I think that I'll celebrate by climbing some building walls in search of some celebrities.
An interesting take on some of the lesser known duties that the Dark Knight has been tasked with over the years by The Liverpool Scene (stinkin' British hippies I do believe).
For those of you, besides myself, who would like to anthropomorphize A-Team action figures check out this B.A. Baracus figure.
Queen Lafresia hitting the Miracle Grow hard again after a recent battle with Captain Harlock.
Why this issue has never turned up in any of my long box hunts is beyond me. Perhaps I should just break down and order it
One thing that has always struck me as funny is that Doctor Zero, Yattaran and the rest of Harlock's non-bridge crew are rather short. So I wonder if they are indeed little people or are they the people that were squished and then sent to the alien world in Phantasm? Did Harlock rescue them? How does the Tall Man feel about the Mazzone? These are the questions that keep me up at night!
Granted, my favorite thing about Space Probe Taurus is probably the image above. Having said that, the movie itself is certainly no great shakes and if you don't absolutely have to watch a 1965 sci-fi b-rate that looks like it was made at least ten years earlier than that, then don't. I on the other hand absolutely must watch such a movie. I have read that the Space Probe Taurus was made with the intent of being a television movie and indeed was probably the nearest equivalent to a straight to video release that they had in '65, but there are cinema lobby style posters for the movie so it probably did appear in theaters as well. As for the movie itself you're really not going to want to know that much about it since your interest will have either been piqued sufficiently by the picture above, and you're already searching for it on You Tube, or not at all, in which case you're already on the lululemon site checking out yoga pants. I'll just enumerate some of the movie's more poignant moments. Ummm, well there really are no poignant moments. Well perhaps you could count a couple of characters, whom you won't give a damn about at all, dying and a courting scene that could only be characterized as Harvey Weinsteinish as poignant, but I don't so I'll move on. Interestingly, or maybe not, there is also band by the name of Space Probe Taurus who are decent enough in the fuzzed stoner rock genre to please fans of Fu Manchu and Monster Magnet. I digress, more to the point would be asking the question as to why was the exploration of trash planets the subject of so many of these early sci-fi flicks? To be fair, in Space Probe Taurus the crew does ultimately reach a perfectly fine planet, giant crabs and weird, undersea kabuki creature aside, but the movie commences with a scene on what appears to be the emphysema planet. Soon enough though the movie switches to the travails of our protagonist crew as they battle aliens and unsuccessfully dodge lumps of Kingsford charcoal briquettes. Let me dial back the witticisms a bit, I mean I did watch this movie start to finish, but then again I've been known to watch harness racing sans the betting action on it. Long story short (why didn't I lead with that? We would have been done by now) Space Probe Taurus is a low budget, 60's sci-fi movie from American International pictures and you can watch it if you'd like.
I almost forgot to mention that Francine York has the lead female roll in the movie as the astro-babe who, when she's not fiddling with a chemistry set, has to stave off malodorous advances from the non geezer age crew members. As for the geezer scientist, he's played by prolific television and B-rate actor Russ Bender who having died at the early age of 59 back in '69 certainly would have given us many more memorable genre roles had he lived longer.
It's our family's tradition to go see a movie on pretty much most holidays. So it was with this past Presidents Day an opportunity to delight in Marvel's Black Panther. We all very much enjoyed it as has pretty much everyone in the world at this point. I will even go so far as to say that it ranks up there with one of my all time favorite comic movies, the 1973 Amicus production of Vault of Horror. It probably goes without saying that Vault nor it's EC Comics counterpart, the 1972 Amicus Tales From the Crypt, get as much love as HBO's run of the latter with the lovable Crypt Keeper host, but both movies are sheer delights and must sees. In regards to Black Panther, I will say that our namesake store, Epic Robo-Spider, does have a very fine copy of volume one Black Panther #1 in stock so don't hesitate to contact us should you be needing one of those.
