Kimo stage circa 1927

Your Cheese Magnet correspondent has lately been spending his time chasing two new puppies around the house, between bouts of trying to get actual work done.  I have seen some movies, and will get a review up soon, probably of the Roger Corman “classic” ATTACK OF THE CRAB MONSTERS, which is about giant mutant telepathic crabs which inhabit a Pacific atoll that looks suspiciously like the California coast.  In the meantime, here’s a short something about something you all should really know about:

Steve Earle came to town last night, ably assisted by his five person band, the Dukes, in support of his new cd , SO YOU WANNABE AN OUTLAW (which, according to reviews is “an homage to outlaw music and is dedicated to the late Waylon Jennings”) and played before a sold out house in the Kimo, which is probably Albuquerque’s most charming building (I know, low bar). The last, I believe, example of Southwestern Art Deco in the city and probably the last surviving movie palace (the name fits) in that style in the world, it really is an architectural treasure and a great concert venue. I’ve been a fan of his for a long time (he wrote the finest, in my estimation, coal mining song of all time, “The Mountain” which ends with the gut-wenching line “There’s a chill in the air only miners can feel; There’s ghosts in the tunnels that the company sealed.” It has long been an inspiration to me when I’m working on BLACK TRAIN COMING. You can see it here. This was the first opportunity I’ve had to see him live.

He and the Dukes played a three hour set of country-tinged rock (as opposed to rock-tinged country, if you know what I mean), traditional and roots style music, with Earle playing electric and acoustic guitar, mandolin, and bouzouki (“If you’re traveling by air,” Earle says, “don’t tell security that you have a bouzouki.”), flavored with his unapologetic political asides and discourse on his own life, which some might describe as turbulent. There were many highlights, including his own “Copperhead Road,” (weirdly, just the night before I had watched Robert Mitchum’s 1958 movie THUNDER ROAD, which tells a similar story), “Hey Joe.,” immortalized by Hendrix in ‘66, with Dukes’ guitarist Chris Masterson playing an incredible electric lead, and “Goodbye Michelangelo,” Earle’s tribute to the late, great Guy Clark (and if you don’t know Guy Clarke, check out this live version of “Dublin Blues”. Clark, who passed away last year after a long battle with lymphoma took a then 19-year old high school dropout Steve Earle under his wing and, as Earle said, “taught him how to write songs.” He ended the three song encore with a deeply personal monolog about, at heart, being a Romantic, and the haunting acoustic song “The Girl on the Mountain.”

Steve Earle and the Dukes will be touring for awhile. As I write this they are on the road to Tucson. If they come to your town do yourself a favor and check them out. He is that true rarity in the arts, a unique voice, and he deserves to be heard.

See this movie.

All discussion will be reserved for the comment section, to avoid any hint of spoilers for those who haven’t seen it.

The explosion of rock music in the 60s inspired countless teenagers across the country to get together and play music in their dad’s garage. They made simple, raw, three chord rock inspired by the Stones, the Kinks, even the Beatles. Most of them lacked chops but made up for it with raw power, aggression and enthusiasm. All of this was unknown to me, hinted at by the likes of The Kingsmen the way a single dinosaur bone hints at an entire colony of Tyrannosaurs, buried by the past. It wasn’t until 1983 that a record collecting garage rock fan named Tim Warren put together a compliation titled Back From The Grave that this music started to be heard by a wider audience.

I think I heard my first Back From The Grave compo in about 1993. Mind blown. Every song was a raw, powerful, snarling slice of garage proto-punk. Yes, punk rock was a thing long before the Ramones and the Sex Pistols. What else would you call music made by teen punks who could barely play three chords in time? Unlike 70’s punk, this stuff wasn’t political. Lyrics covered the usual teen obsessions: sex, love, booze, cars, monsters, surf, spies. Released on a few hundred 45s, maybe getting a little local airplay if they were lucky, this stuff languished in obscurity until Warren put out that first volume. More followed, with a long hiatus through the new milennium until restarting (better than ever) a few years ago.

For a fan of this kind of music, every song is great. Here are a few of my favorites:

Jailbait by the Travel Agency. I love the driving beat on this one, the “ahh ah ah ahh” chorus, the hard to understand lyrics about, well, jailbait. An all time classic that should have been a hit:

Crusher, by The Novas. A tribute to professional wrestling, where the titular Crusher recites some of his favorite moves and calls the listener a turkey neck. Covered years later by The Cramps.

No Reason To Complain by The Alarm Clocks. Not to be confused with the Strawberry Alarm Clock. Another stomper with a great bass riff that maybe owes a little to The Animals’ It’s My Life but is even better.

Even today, more than 30 years after the first Back From The Grave release these tunes are still influencing rockers. Look around, you may be lucky enough to have a local band that still plays this kind of music in your town. But what if you can’t find one? Where can you go to see an entire scene built around this music? Would you believe Tokyo, Japan?

I’m still trying to uncover more details but several years ago a Back From The Grave fan named Daddy-O Nov started organizing shows at small clubs in Tokyo, where the music and cool fashions inspired a new generation to buy guitars and go nuts. As with the original 60s garage punks, the musicianship is all over the map but the enthusiasm and attitude are off the charts. Check it:

The Stompin’ Riff Raffs. High energy rockabilly guitar combined with 60s go-go fashions, themed costumes and a friggin’ theremin, if you can believe that. This is some serious drunken craziness.

A little tamer is That’s A No No, three cute gals on guitars and a guy on drums. Their version of The Clapping Song rocks all over The Belle Stars.

If that’s too tame for you, how about the studded leather, Iron Cross necklaces and bobby hats(?) of Theee Bat. They make The Sonics and The Monks look like Pat Boone.

The Japanese Back From The Grave scene is documented in Garage Rockin’ Craze, a film by Mario Cuzic, a Canadian living in Japan. I haven’t seen it available on DVD or streaming yet but you can read more about it here, and check out the trailer. I’m keeping an eye out for this one.

You can buy all the Back From The Grave records on Amazon, highly recommended. If you want to check out more of the Japanese garage scene, YouTube is probably your best bet. Just click on one of these videos and check out the recommended videos, there’s a ton of this stuff.

Warning Note: Viewing This Film May Be Detrimental To Your Health (details follow)

Disambiguity Note: Not to be confused with Disney’s Rocketman (1997), which was probably pretty bad. But not as bad as this.

Don’t let the DVD cover or the cast list fool you. The DVD cover shows some guy in a space suit, holding his helmet on his hip. The cast includes genre stalwarts Anne Francis, Beverly Garland, and John Agar. But this SF film may be the least science fictional SF movie of all time.

Set in the never-never land of small town America of the mid-fifties, The Rocket Man concerns a (surprisingly female) Justice of the Peace (Spring Byington) who is surprisingly stern, unsurprisingly morally upright, unbelievably Pollyannish, and a good cook to boot. Among her many eccentricities, she apparently collects adorable orfinks from the local orphanage (at least, no one thinks it’s unusual when she takes home adorable little Timmy, played like Opie Taylor heavily ‘luded up by George “Foghorn” Wilson, but, suspiciously, no one mentions any others she may have “taken home” earlier. Hmmmm.). Coincidentally (coincidence thunders through this film like the Hand of God), right before she picks up Timmy, the orfinks had just been entertained by representatives of an apparently local tv spaceman show (I’m sure many small towns in America had their own local tv shows in the 1950’s; just part of what made America so great back then), but when it came Timmy’s turn to pick up his souvenir ray gun, they’d just run out.

This scene actually never appears in the movie.

Not to worry. The dude from the cover of the DVD appears (literally) and places a ray gun in the box now empty of toys. Oddly, no one notices this, but, what the hell, Timmy gets his ray gun, so everyone goes home happy.

That very afternoon, Timmy is playing with some orfink pals near the highway (never a good idea) and one of orfinks is play shot and lays down in the middle of the highway playing dead (really never a good idea). Along comes drunken lout and local political bigwig Big Bill Watkins, traveling at seventy miles an hour. It would have been blood on the highway and a closed-casket funeral, but little Timmy points his ray gun at the car and stops it inches away from squishing his pal. A cop drags the sot before the stern and incorruptible JoP, and she jugs him for ten days, despite his threats and offers of a bribe. This arouses Big Bill’s ire and plot really starts rolling.

Anyway, I’ll try to keep this short, but, Jesus, plot hijinks keep ensuing. One of the grand-motherly JoP quaint hobbies is to board young felons on parole, to give them the opportunity to go straight, which was a practice quite prevalent, I’m sure, in small town America in the 1950s (as long as the parolees weren’t Black, I’m guessing). She gets a telegram from the governor that another such jail bird is on the way and will arrive by bus on Saturday, conveniently leaving out such details as, oh, HIS NAME. This ensures further hijinks as the JoP sends her adult (and quite stunning) daughter Anne Francis, to pick him up. Who shows up but John Agar, sleepwalking his way through this one, handsome, and in a well tailored suit. Unnoticed by young Anne, another guy, much less handsome, also gets off the bus, accompanied by a young (and unblond) Beverly Garland. He’s the real parolee, of course, and though they show up at a few points later in the movie, they mainly exist to provide for more coincidence and plot shenanigans.

Anne takes John home to Mom, and after supper that night they’re on the swing on the porch (of course) talking about having kids and stuff, and John allows as to how they could have six daughters and six sons and then he’s on her like a wolf on a pork chop. So much for 1950’s sexual mores, but, hey, got to move the plot along.

In light of that, the guy from the cover of the DVD visits little Timmy that night (not in a dream, but, literally, again, appearing by his bedside as he sleeps) and tells him that his ray gun is very powerful, just like Aladdin’s lamp, and must only be used for good, not evil. Great judgment, there, Rocket Man (There are no rockets in this film.), in giving it to a seven year old.

The guy from the DVD cover is actually kind of scary.

So, of course, it turns out that John Agar is really a lawyer working for Big Bill, and he’s in town to put in a bid for the orphanage, whose lease, coincidentally, is up in the next couple of days. He plans to buy it and put it out of business and all the adorable orfinks will get sent to the State Orphanage, which, unlike the orphanage with no visible means of support in this small town, is really, really hideous.

Not to worry, says, the JoP, she’ll raise the money to top his bid and buy the orphanage herself. Alas, they are fifteen hundred dollars short. But, it’s Ed’s poker night. Ed is a portly guy (Charles Coburn) and is the town’s plumber and mayor, and has been the JoP’s suitor for the last twelve years (he always shows up for meals because she’s such a fine cook). He’ll win the money. Well, no. He loses almost all his dough, until little Timmy, watching from a window, intervenes in the last hand and gives all the other guys four of a kind and Ed a royal flush. Problem solved. Money raised, 1950’s disapproval of illegal gambling be damned.

Little Timmy Gets His Gun

JoP rushes to the office of something or other to put in a topping bid, but Big Bill has informed the clerk, or whoever the hell he was, of an old and obscure blue law that will not allow state property (which apparently the orphanage was all this time) to be sold a day before a municipal election, which, coincidentally, will be held the next day.

Not to worry, says Ed. He’ll fix things. They all attend the political rally of Big Bill’s Honest Party (really), even John Agar, who is back in Anne’s graces. Ultimately, she apparently couldn’t resist the lure of all that sex it would take to engender six sons and six daughters. Big Bill is in the middle of a blustery speech about electing him (for what office, actually, is never revealed) and there’ll be a chicken in every pot and America will be great again, etc, etc, and the rubes, I mean, voters are eating it up, when portly old Ed Johnson interrupts and offers an opposing viewpoint. But, damn. He’s hooted off the stage. What to do? Who will save the orfinks?

Not to worry, little Timmy is in the audience and he’s bought his gun. He shoots Big Bill and Big Bill goes on a rant all about how he’s a boozer and a dame-chaser and all that, and why he really want the orphanage. It seems that there’s oil under the orphanage’s land (the orphanage, which, remember, seems to be owned by the state). Oil. Black Gold. Texas Tea.

Well, that does it. The Honest Party is in the crapper. Apparently, the opposition party, whatever it’s called, wins. Cut to final scene, where there’s an oil derrick RIGHT ON THE FRONT LAWN of the orphanage (sure to be environmentally friendly for all the little orfinks). Where’s Timmy, someone asks. Oh, he’s on the moon. The moon, you say? Timmy suddenly appears, eating a sandwich. A green cheese sandwich. What do you think the moon is made of?, Timmy asks. Cut to guy from DVD cover, smiling and also contentedly munching a green cheese sandwich. Cue closing credits.

I had to leave out many details (such as the fact that little Timmy is accompanied near everywhere by his pet Sol, who is a giant bullfrog who is never near water during the entire movie and who, suspiciously, never moves much, if at all, during the course of the film), but you get the drift. This is SF only by the most exhaustive stretch of the imagination possible. It has SF trappings, sure, but the movie would have worked better if little Timmy actually did have Aladdin’s damn lamp. At least that would have made some sense. This movie is Capra corn on steroids and the most astonishing thing is that the screenplay was largely written by Lenny Bruce. Lenny goddamn Bruce. What was he thinking?

So, I’m sitting there, watching this at about 1:30 AM and as I’m getting towards the end of it, I’m feeling queasy. I soldier on, nonetheless, but ultimately have to pause it, because I’m really not feeling well. I suddenly realize that I’m hypoglycemic. I check my blood sugar, and, it’s really, really low, which is totally weird because I’d checked it just a couple of hours before and it was fine. This film has literally sucked all the sugar out of my blood stream like some kind of diabetic vampire, maybe to add to its already sky-high saccharin content. You’ve been warned.

The Rocket Man gets a 2 on my 1-10 scale, and a “2″ is not on the high end.

Amazon: The Rocket Man on DVD

Like Dracula from his coffin, the Mummy from his tomb, the Creature from his Black Lagoon, the shambling hulk that is Cheese Magnet has been shocked back to life to provide endless and, more importantly, free entertainment to the masses in this dreary landscape of the often excruciating world of 2017. I know I missed it, and I hope you did too. I don’t know if I can sustain a reasonable posting schedule, but I’m going to give it a shot, and I hope that all old Cheese Magnet fans – and some new ones – will come along for the ride. I’m going to be examining the same type of stuff as I did in the past, older (for the most part) SF/Fantasy films, books, pulp art, with the occasional forays into music, baseball, or whatever flights into pop culture my fancy may take.

To show that there can indeed be new things under the sun, I’m going to kick off with a science fiction movie made in 1959 that I had never heard of until very recently, called (you can’t make this stuff up) Terror in the Midnight Sun. Special thanks to smof and fellow film buff Ken Keller for bringing it to my attention.

I thought that I had at least heard of every SF film of the 1950s (and seen all but a small, Trump-sized handful), but this one had escaped my attention. To be fair, it is rather obscure. Although it’s covered in my personal Bible, Bill Warren’s Keep Watching the Skies [And, awkward as this aside is, I would be remiss if I didn’t let the dreary and often excruciating world of 2017 intrude to note Bill’s passing during Cheese Magnet’s hiatus. Fare well Bill, and I hope your view of the skies is even better, now.], you can’t know everything in its 1004 close-packed pages.

The movie has a complicated history. Filmed in 1959 in Sweden (It is possibly the second greatest ‘50’s Scandinavian SF film ever made, even though I only of two of them, and Reptilicus is only a 1950’s movie in the broadest thematic sense.) as Space Invasion of Lapland, it actually never had a U.S. release until it appeared on a 2001 DVD. A rather bowdlerized, (thanks to anti-genius Jerry Warren) version premiered in 1962 in the U.S. as Invasion of the Animal People. Even this version has a complicated history, as the theatrical release has a running time of 55 minutes (!), the tv syndication is 73 minutes, and the DVD version 81. Although I’ve only seen the latter, I imagine that exactly none of those minutes are any good.

Warren calls Jerry Warren “one of the most uncaring movie ‘producers’ in history” and further states that the original version was “far, far superior to Animal People, [which is] a clotted, incoherent mess.” With which I agree. Warren (Jerry, that is) cuts large swathes of the film, inserts an utterly incoherent framing device that confuses Sweden with Switzerland, rearranges scenes so they no longer flow understandably, adds a few static, expository scenes where people stand around and gab about what’s going on in Sweden while looking at a map of Greenland, and tops it all off by hiring John Carradine to intone an incomprehensible opening prolog that has nothing to do with the rest of the film and then end it with an epilog that’s even more stupefying.

Not that the original film was great, but it has its moments. There’s skiing. A lot of skiing. There’s also some ice skating on a tiny little pond by the very attractive female lead (Barbara Wilson, playing the imaginatively named Diane Wilson) who’s there mainly to provide a romantic interest for young hunk scientist Erik Engstrom (Swedish actor Stan Gester) and also an eyeful for the audience in a shower scene that, unique to 1950s sf films, is very NSFW (this is a Swedish movie, after all; it was cut from Warren’s version). Young Erik is assisting Diane’s uncle in investigating a strange meteor that has crashed in a remote corner of northern Sweden, conveniently near the tiny little town where Diane was entertaining the local urchins with her fabulous ice skating.

Well, of course, the meteor isn’t a meteor but a rocket ship, which contains not only aliens who look suspiciously like Death from some other Swedish film, what was it?, oh yes, Seventh Seal, but also, apparently, I guess, because where else would it come from?, this big, shambling monster, who (after a lot more skiing) grabs Diane and runs off with her. This pisses-off the local Laplanders (who wear really cute hats) who come after it with torches. Literally. The ending, like much of the film, is a little incoherent. And kind of cheaply done. But I’ve seen worse. A lot worse.

Oh yes, there’s also a somewhat sappy theme song called “Love in the Midnight Sun,” or something like that, sung apparently by a very famous Swedish singer of the time, which Diane and Erik dance to when they’re not skiing. So there’s that, too.

I would also be remiss if I didn’t mention the DVD’s extras, which include a multitude of very bizarre items, including a (unintentional) mockumentary on the degrading lives led by Stockholm teens, an episode of a Curt Siodmark helmed Swedish TV show hosted by Lon Chaney who plays a deranged criminal who introduces scenarios depicting even worse crimes than those he purportedly committed (high concept, indeed), another documentary (mock or not, I’m not sure) concerning Laplanders and the method they use to castrate male reindeer which is carried out by the women of the tribe in the most unsanitary way imaginable, and, finally, half a dozen trailers for Swedish movies of the time period which themselves are totally NSFW, let alone the movies. It’s a veritable smorgasbord.

Amazon: Terror in the Midnight Sun DVD

As popular as Johnny was though, he was famously private and difficult to know. And given the thousands of guests he had over the years there were bound to be some great stories left untold.  That’s why I was happy to find The Johnny Carson Podcast. Host Mark Malkoff talks to frequent guests and insiders about their Tonight Show experience and memories. The guest list has been impressive in the three year run of the podcast, ranging from the first guest comedian Tom Dreesen to Charles Grodin, Dick Cavett, Paul Williams, David Steinberg, as well as writers, musicians, behind the scenes personnel.

My personal favorite guests are the comedians. Throughout the 70’s and 80’s getting a spot on the Tonight Show could catapult a comedian to instant stardom. Getting laughs from Johnny meant you were good, getting the OK sign after a set meant you were on your way to stardom, and Johnny waving you over was the highest honor and the equivalent of being made man in the Mafia. Several comedians on the podcast talk about going to the airport the next morning and being recognized, where it had never happened before. They suddenly went from being paid peanuts as a mid level act to being headliners, with “From The Tonight Show” prominent on the billing.

One of the all time great Tonight Show debuts was a then-unknown Steven Wright, plucked from obscurity in a Boston comedy club by Tonight Show producer Peter Lassally, who just happened to be in town to visit colleges with his daughter. Wright is the guest on episode two of The Carson Podcast and talks about that appearance in deeply personal and touching way that I’ve never heard before. I happened to see that first appearance when it originally aired and was blown away by this weird guy and his surreal jokes. Even better than the jokes was his genuinely stunned and shocked reaction when Johnny calls him over. It’s not an act, he really was that shocked. As he says on the podcast, here he was sitting with the guy he’s been watching since he was 14 years old and decided he wanted to be a comedian. You’re seeing someone’s lifelong dream literally come true, which is a pretty rare and amazing thing.

I love when Carson says a lot of comedians don’t come out of Boston. Wright was the first and opened the floodgates for a wave of great comedians like Denis Leary, Paula Poundstone, Bobcat Goldthwait and many, many more

Malkoff asked Wright who he thought had the best Tonight Show debut of all time and he said Drew Carey. Yes, for those youngsters out there, the Price Is Right host was once a portly stand-up comedian from Cleveland. He was also a guest on the Carson Podcast and tells the whole story of that appearance, and explains that his bizarrely short haircut on the show was an accident.

Another all time great guest was Charles Grodin. He was the first guest, and one of only three ever, to sign an exclusive contract to be a regular guest on the Tonight Show. For a number of years he would appear every few months as the lead guest and proceed to bust Johnny’s balls the entire time. It was all an act but done so well and so deadpan that many viewers thought it was real. The audience would often boo and viewers would send hate mail. Johnny loved it of course, it was a chance for him to verbally spar with one of the few people capable of matching him quip for quip. Grodin has made two appearances on the Carson Podcast, where he talks about his friendship with Johnny and his regret at turning down Johnny’s offer to join him on an African safari later in his life. Grodin’s act of being “in character as himself” was a precursor to what Larry David did years later on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Here he is getting some real candor out of Johnny:

With three years of episodes and new ones coming out regularly, The Carson Podcast will keep you entertained for hundreds of hours. All of the above episodes are great but you can jump in anywhere. Begin with Dreesen and episode one or just dip in and listen to your favorite guests. I strongly recommend The Carson Podcast, it’s a great resource of untold stories and fond memories of the king of late night.

Website: The Carson Podcast

iTunes: The Carson Podcast

Guardians 3 is no doubt still in the planning stages, so with that in mind we here at Cheese Magnet would like to suggest seven classic songs that would fit right in.

Hush – Deep Purple
This classic hard rock song was recorded by Deep Purple in 1968, and is actually a cover originally recorded by Billy Joe Royal. The driving rhythm, chugging organ and rocking guitar all give a feeling of power and majesty that would fit perfectly for the opening fly-by as the gang pursues some evil-doers through space.

Rock Me Gently – Andy Kim
We’re going to need an upbeat love song in the vein of Come And Get Your Love, and Brandy. Rock Me Gently is perfect, with Andy Kim doing his best Neil Diamond soundalike. Trigger warning: this video features Kim in full 70’s regalia, with big hair, open shirt, gold chain, chest hair and severe male camel toe. View at your own risk.

Boogie Down – Eddie Kendricks
We need a real old school banger for a light-hearted scene in a space dance club or something, and there’s nothing funkier than Boogie Down.

20th Century Boy – T Rex
Every Guardians movie has that slow motion hero shot of the team walking out to stir up trouble. Cherry Bomb was perfect in the first movie. This one is a little on the nose but I’m going to suggest 20th Century Boy, with one of the all time great guitar riffs.

Rasputin – Boney M
Yondu and Rocket’s gleeful murder spree in Guardians 2 was set to Come a Little Bit Closer by Jay & The Americans, a remarkably upbeat song for a death rampage. I propose we use Rasputin for a similar scene in Guardians 3. Gunn hasn’t used an out and out disco song yet, except for Guardians Inferno over the closing credits of 2. I’ve read that song was inspired by the disco version of the Star Wars theme but to my ear it sounds a lot closer to Rasputin, so why not use the real thing?

Hey Jude – Wilson Pickett
There will undoubtedly be a sad or pensive moment in Guardians 3, something that leads to an emotional uplift and for that I nominate the legendary Wilson Pickett doing Hey Jude, with a then-unknown Duane Allman on lead guitar. This was the track that got Allman noticed by Eric Clapton and many say was the first Southern Rock song.

Slow Ride – Foghat
This has to be the end credits song. It’s over 8 minutes long, plenty of time for the long credits roll and the various Easter egg scenes that will no doubt be dropped in. Plus it’s triumphantly bad ass.

Famously banned in the early 1980s in the UK as part of the “Video Nasties” list, Anthropophagus tells the story of a group of tourists who visit a small Greek island and encounter a crazed cannibal named Klaus. Klaus, you see, previously had been adrift in a small boat with his wife and son. Hunger set in, he attempted to kill the son to eat him but accidentally killed the wife, so he ate them both. At some point he made it back to the island and has been snacking on visitors ever since.

One of the tourists is a pregnant woman, who’s maybe the most annoyingly helpless slasher movie victim since the wheelchair guy in Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The big gross-out scene is when Klaus kills her, rips out the fetus and eats it. Apparently this badly done gore scene was enough to instigate an official investigation as to whether an actual fetus was killed and eaten for the movie. People were a lot less sophisticated back then, apparently.

The first hour or so of this movie is pretty much unwatchable without extensive use of the fast forward button. The last 20 minutes or so at least include some action and one genuine jump scare, followed by a nice juicy throat wound. There’s one last epic gross-out when Klaus takes a pick axe to the stomach, pulls out his intestines and eats them before keeling over dead.

I can’t really recommend Anthropophagus to anyone but hardcore cheese enthusiasts. The good news is the uncut version is available on YouTube so you can at least see what all the fuss was about.  If you’re really into this sort of thing (and I worry about you if that’s the case), Amazon sells a DVD that is probably the best presentation we’ll ever see of a movie like this.

Amazon: Anthropophagus DVD

Let’s face it, most of us who are into science fiction and horror movies weren’t exactly the most popular kids in school. We preferred to spend our weekends watching TV rather than out running around in the fresh air and sunshine. And our parents certainly weren’t going to allow us to watch some shitty monster movie on the living room set when the game was on. The solution was the cheapest possible small TV, and in the 70s and 80s that meant a 12″ black and white, usually purchased second hand.  The 1977 Sears Wishbook Christmas catalog lists a 12″ black and white set at $77.95 (Lowest price ever!) but a 13″ color set would run you a whopping $266.95, so not many of us kids were going to get a color set.

And since most of us had a second hand or hand me down set, there were usually problems. The rotary channel knobs often broke off, despite the best efforts of all parents yelling at their kids to not flip the channels so violently. In my case the VHF knob broke off entirely so I had to use a pair of pliers to turn the metal shaft. The pliers themselves were old and rusted, with no insulating handle so about one out of every ten channel changes I’d get a nasty shock. We’re talking a deep, vibrating shock running up the arm, all the way to the elbow, not a little static zap.

In those pre-cable days of the 1970’s we had maybe 4 or 5 channels on VHF, plus another 3 or 4 on UHF. VHF was home to the networks (ABC,NBC, CBS and PBS were all we had in those days) but UHF was where the good stuff was, the independent stations that filled their air time with shlocky movies purchased in bulk. They often had a host to introduce the movies, either a Dialing for Dollars format, or if you were lucky you’d get a horror host. The fact that we saw everything in black and white made the host blend in with the movies, and made the age of the movie irrelevant. For the longest time I had no idea that most of the Hammer horror movies were in lurid color, and it really didn’t matter to me. Looney Tunes cartoons were just as monochromatic as the Three Stooges and Abbot and Costello. The black and white set was an equalizer, it removed any prejudice we might have developed for color.

Dr Paul Bearer, host of Creature Feature on WTOG-44 out of Tampa, FL. Watching in black and white just made him seem like part of those old movies.

The freedom of having the TV in our bedroom allowed us to develop our taste for the weird and abnormal. The weekly ritual of combing through the new TV Guide with a pen, circling the things we wanted to watch, was now solely for our own benefit. There was no need to determine if your family had a conflicting show on when you wanted to watch Night Gallery.  It also allowed us to stay up way too late. I remember staying up to watch Letterman every night, when his show started at 12:30 am, after Carson. If Letterman was a repeat or something particularly lurid was on the CBS Late Movie I’d watch that. I’m pretty sure that’s where I first encountered Gargoyles, a movie that to this day still gives me the creeps. I’m sure watching while in a state of half-sleep had something to do with it.

It was way scarier in black and white, trust me.

These days everyone has a giant 4K flat screen in their living room and another in the bedroom. Everything is available all the time, we’ve lost the feeling that we’ve discovered something special and rare, viewed through a 12″ portal to a world without color. Is it better now? Well there’s no going back, I’m not about to hunt down an old black and white set with a busted knob and electrocute myself trying to change channels. In fact, all TV broadcasts are in digital now so the set wouldn’t work without an adapter.  We’ve undoubtedly gained far more than we’ve lost, but maybe the things we’ve lost have a value of their own.

Did you have a black and white set in your bedroom? Leave a comment, I’d love to hear your memories.

But one thing I really love about Live And Let Die is the glimpse into 007’s home life. M arrives unannounced early one morning, while Bond has a young hottie in his bed. Trying to hide his indiscretion, Bond ushers M into the kitchen for some coffee, allowing us a look at his culinary decor.

My absolute favorite detail is the copper rooster molds on the wall. Is that really something a sophisticated British super spy would have on his wall? I can’t see Sean Connery’s Bond with that but Moore’s Bond just seems to enjoy the homey comforts. Another great detail in this picture is the groovy circular spice rack on the left wall. I wonder if it rotates? I suspect it does, so you can move the bottle you want to the bottom and unscrew it without spilling. We also see 007’s waffle iron, a couple of matching corkscrews and the requisite bottles of booze. Looks like some champagne, possible some brandy, and a very large bottle of Pernod bitters. This isn’t Bond’s bar, of course. In another scene we can see a nice set of crystal bar ware on a cabinet in his living room. I like to think this is what he drinks when he’s cooking, and maybe one of those bottles is some nice cooking sherry for when 007 wants to impress a date with an Andalusian paella.

Bond also has a groovy coffee grinder right in the center of the kitchen. In this scene he grinds up some beans and uses a little espresso machine to press it out, then adds a little milk and uses the built in steam to froth it, while M looks on in bewilderment. In the background we can see more copper cookware, including a very 70’s fondue set. The fridge is fairly small, as they tend to be in Europe. It’s topped with a few decorative tins with a nautical motif, reflecting 007’s time in the Royal Navy. I expect one would find some oatmeal in one of those tins, and perhaps some mild biscuits for tea.

Here’s Roger Moore as Bond in the scene that made me a Bond fan for life. Rest in peace, 007.

Amazon carries the amazing Ultimate James Bond Collection, all movies up to Skyfall on Blu Ray, with a ton of extras. It’s a little pricey but they run sales from time to time, or you can just buy the movies individually. I think it’s worth the price for a true fan, I’ve rewatched almost every Bond movie, many more than twice.