Dead 2 Rights

Obscure but not (totally) forgotten: The Golden Tone Singers of Detroit

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Sun, 15 Nov 2026 14:06:25 -0600

Who were The Golden Tone Singers of Detroit? We'll never know. And that's beautiful.

Rock 'n' roll may be the devil's music, but it was forged in the crucible of the Lord. There's just no way to talk about the birth of rock without mentioning the heavy influence of gospel. Many of the early rockers grew up singing in church, and it deeply affected the music they made as teens and adults. And if you listen to 1950s gospel records, with their passionate vocals and urgent guitar and drums, they sound remarkably like rock records. The Simpsons had a joke about the difference between Christian music and pop: "All you do is change 'Jesus' to 'baby.'" That's an oversimplification, perhaps, but it's not without truth.

There were countless gospel ensembles who recorded and performed throughout the 1950s—some well-known acts like The Soul Stirrers (where Sam Cooke got his start) and The Golden Gate Quartet, but many more obscure ones whose "fame" never extended past a single city or region. These acts may have only existed for a brief time, leaving a handful of recordings, press clippings, and live performances as their only legacy. One such blip on the radar was a group called The Golden Tone Singers of Detroit. As a proud Michigander myself, how could I resist an act with a name like that?

The Big Bus (1976): The Airplane! before Airplane!

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Fri, 13 Nov 2026 15:39:36 -0600

Enjoy the Jack Davis artwork for James Frawley's The Big Bus.

The '70s: Decade of disaster.

I've sat through quite a few disaster movies over the years, which is odd since I'm not exactly a great fan of the genre. What can I say? I was born in the 1970s, the decade when producer Irwin Allen became the so-called "Master of Disaster" with such calamitous films as The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and The Towering Inferno (1974). This stuff was all around me when I was growing up, both in movie theaters and on TV. I saw these films whether I wanted to or not.

The "disaster movie" formula is easy enough to understand. Gather a couple dozen familiar actors (generally a mix of major stars and B-listers) and put them in some ridiculously perilous situation, often involving a doomed mode of transportation or some terrible act of God. Focus on a few heartbreaking human stories that are occurring amid this terrible, large-scale event. Throw in a love story or two for good measure. Maybe there's a hero in need of redemption. If possible, include a villain who is either responsible for the problem or who is making things worse for our heroes. Make sure to have some fiery explosions (or crashing waves or falling rocks) and lots of dramatic music, and you've got yourself a movie.

Naturally, the popularity of disaster movies did not escape the attention of comedians and satirists. There were memorable spoofs of these films on Saturday Night Live and The Carol Burnett Show, plus Mad magazine parodies like "Mirthquake," "The Poopsidedown Adventure," and "The Towering Sterno." John Landis' The Kentucky Fried Movie (1977) included a mock trailer for an Irwin Allen-type film called "That's Armageddon," including cameos by George Lazenby and Donald Sutherland. And members of the comedy troupes The Credibility Gap and Ace Trucking Company appeared in an obscure movie called Cracking Up (1977), which depicts the events following a massive California earthquake.

The definitive and still most-loved disaster movie parody arrived in 1980 with Airplane!, written and directed by the team of Jerry Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and David Zucker, the same guys who had written The Kentucky Fried Movie three years earlier. It's well-known that Airplane! takes much of its plot from the movie Zero Hour! (1957), which had already been remade for television as Terror in the Sky (1971). But what I didn't know until just this week is that Paramount, the studio that released Airplane! to such acclaim, had tried and failed for box office glory with a very similar comedy just four years earlier.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 298: The strange tale of the robotic Tor Johnson

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Wed, 11 Nov 2026 05:00:00 -0600

Ben Skora brought Tor Johnson back to simulated life.

Skora: An American original.

The future hasn't happened yet, and I'm beginning to doubt it ever will. I am writing this article in the year 2026 AD. I repeat, TWENTY TWENTY SIX! By now, American life should resemble The Jetsons (1962-1963) or at least Back to the Future Part II (1989). But it very much does not. Instead of flying cars and sassy robot maids, we have data centers and AI slop. What a disappointment. I think we've lost the ability to be excited about technology or awed by progress, thanks in part to the Musks and Zuckerbergs of the world. The futurists didn't account for greedy, soulless tech bros.

So you can imagine my surprise and delight at discovering Ben Skora (1937-2018), a hypnotherapist, record producer, and amateur inventor from Palos Hills, Illinois who became a celebrity in the late 1970s and remained one for decades. Ben's impractical yet intriguing homemade gizmos—servile robots and other wonderfully unnecessary household items—generated a great deal of publicity, both in print and on screen. There is so much material about this guy, easily enough to fill a book.

Over a period of years, Ben turned his suburban home, originally a prefabricated house purchased from the Sears catalog, into a push-button wonderland he jokingly called the "Far Out House." And he did all of this without an engineering degree or professional electronics experience! Ben's strange hobby was well-documented in newspaper articles, magazine articles, and segments on TV shows like NBC's Real People (1979-1984) and Ripley's Believe It or Not (1982-1986). He's also featured in Chris Smith's documentary Home Movie (2001).

In retrospect, it's easy to see why Skora was such a hit with reporters and the public. He was an affable, unpretentious guy who was driven by an irresistible desire to create. He tinkered because his personality would not allow him to do otherwise. He wasn't trying to market or mass produce his machines. His hobby actually cost him money. Above all, Ben embodied the individuality and ingenuity of America itself. He was the friendliest possible face of technology, a real-life Gadgeteer Genius who lived in a real-life Gadgeteer's House.

Though the press occasionally reduced him to a "wacky inventor" stereotype—and he leaned into that image himself—Ben Skora was a complicated, multifaceted man. He served in World War II and experienced two failed marriages, plus the death of his only son. At least one of his marriages failed because of Ben's time-consuming hobby. Sadly, the automated house that was his life's work was torn down in 2014. Four years later, Ben succumbed to Alzheimer's at age 81. There is no way for me to convey this man's life in one article. I simply want to alert you to his existence.

Enduring the lobotomized American version of 'The Young Ones'

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 18:19:11 -0600

The not-so-great pretenders: Jackie Earle Haley, Nigel Planer, and Robert Bundy.

It's no secret that numerous popular American sitcoms are actually based on successful British shows. If a format worked over there, it could work over here just as easily. Thus, Steptoe and Son (1962-1974) begat Sanford and Son (1972-1977), Man About the House (1973-1976) begat Three's Company (1976-1984), and The Office (2001-2003) begat... well, The Office (2005-2013). But for every success, there are plenty of failures, some of them quite malodorous. And flops don't get any more rank than Oh No, Not Them! (1989), Fox's aborted attempt to remake The Young Ones (1982-1984).

A UK classic, best left alone.

The original UK series, which debuted on BBC2 on November 9, 1982, concerns a quartet of college students living in a filthy, dilapidated rental house in London. Our main characters include pretentious poser Rick (Rik Mayall), anarchic punk rocker Vyv (Ade Edmondson), sad-sack hippie Neil (Nigel Planer), and smooth-talking ladies' man Mike (Christopher Rich). Since these lads rarely if ever attend classes or study, they have plenty of time to do strange, pointless, and revolting things. Rounding out the cast is satirist Alexei Sayle, who torments the boys in a variety of guises, including their pernicious, scheming landlord Jerzei Balowski.

The world depicted in this show is a bizarre, nightmarish one in which nearly anything can happen at any time. The thin "plot" of any given episode is likely to be interrupted by surreal vignettes and cutaway gags. The Young Ones breathlessly juxtaposes elements of situation comedy, sketch comedy, and pure absurdism. Only twelve half-hour episodes were made, but those twelve episodes contain a wealth of material. The only American show I can really compare it to is Aqua Teen Hunger Force. On both Aqua Teen and The Young Ones, the main characters are perfectly capable of creating chaos on their own, but if they don't, strange characters will simply materialize at their doorstep without warning and start causing havoc almost immediately. Tranquility is never an option in the characters' lives.

Despite the extreme Britishness of The Young Ones, including countless references to pop singer Cliff Richard (whose popularity did not cross the pond), the show was a sizable hit when it was rebroadcast on MTV in 1985. Because the show featured onscreen performances by bands like Madness and Motorhead, it fit in quite nicely with the cable network's other music-based programming. Actor Nigel Planer even came over to reprise his sympathetic, Eeyore-like Neil Pye character on the cable network. I certainly have fond memories of watching classic Young Ones episodes like "Sick," "Nasty," and "Bambi" over and over. Was this my introduction to British comedy? Possibly.

The high-stakes hell of 'When Worlds Collide'

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Mon, 9 Nov 2026 13:29:44 -0600

George Pal gave us a glimpse of the apocalypse.

"If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done." - Peter Ustinov (1956)

The end of the world. Like it or not, it will happen someday—perhaps tomorrow, perhaps ten thousand years from now. But how?

"I have a plan!"

I recently rewatched Stanley Kubrick's "nightmare comedy" Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) in which the human race blunders its way into a thermonuclear war that dooms the entire planet. The film's sinister title character (Peter Sellers), an ex-Nazi scientist now working for the US government, outlines an outrageous scheme for preserving "a nucleus of human specimens." It involves relocating a few specially-chosen humans, including top government and military leaders, to mineshafts "thousands of feet deep." There, the survivors could breed "prodigiously" while they wait for the surface world to become habitable again.

Even if Strangelove's perverse plan could work, it's way too late to implement it. By the time he proposes this solution to the sitting American president (also played by Sellers), the human race has about five minutes left to live. If we were serious about Project: Mineshaft, we should have started on it years ago. But we didn't. And so, the human race (presumably) dies out at the end of the movie.

The characters in the classic sci-fi movie When Worlds Collide (1951) are also prepping for the end of the world, but they've gone about it somewhat more sensibly. Emphasis on somewhat. An eminent scientist named Dr. Cole Herndon (Larry Keating of Mr. Ed fame) has determined that a "rogue star" called Bellus and a planet called Zyra are on a collision course with Earth. After a series of catastrophic tidal waves and earthquakes, our world will be totally destroyed by them in eight months. Herndon's "Hail Mary" contingency plan is to put a few humans on a rocket ship, a la Noah's Ark, and take them to Zyra to restart the human race from scratch.

The low-stakes fun of 'Tales of the Wizard of Oz' (1961)

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Sun, 8 Nov 2026 17:26:19 -0600

Who says every Oz story has to feel monumental?

A more obscure Baum work.

There have been, let's say, plenty of television, film, and stage adaptations of L. Frank Baum's famed Oz series of children's books. In fact, these adaptations have been crucial to the longevity and popularity of this 126-year-old franchise. A musical stage play based on Baum's first Oz book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), was such a success that it directly influenced Baum's sequel, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904). Generations have come to know Baum's characters through the lavish MGM musical The Wizard of Oz (1939). Decades later, author Gregory Maguire introduced a new generation of readers to this world through his novel Wicked (1995), which was later turned into an extremely popular mega-musical and then a duology of blockbuster films.

In short, there's a reason The Wonderful Wizard of Oz has remained consistently in print (and available at bookstores and libraries) for well over a century while Baum's Dot and Tot of Merryland (1901) hasn't. Not that Dot and Tot is without merit. The book is quaintly charming, and it's even illustrated by the same artist, W.W. Denslow, as The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It simply didn't inspire a multimedia empire and dozens of bold, revisionist takes the way Baum's previous book did.

Oz adaptations come in all shapes and sizes—some very lighthearted and frivolous, others quite dark and foreboding. There are Oz adaptations for children, other for adults, and some for mixed audiences. There's so much of this material that even the most-dedicated fan will never get through it all. I learned about some of these spinoffs through various DVD releases of The Wizard of Oz. Hidden among the special features, you might find Ted Eshbaugh's 1933 cartoon, Larry Semon's 1925 silent feature, and Chuck Jones' prime time cartoon Off to See the Wizard (1967). More recently, however, I have become aware of a slightly neglected Oz TV series that might appeal to a wider audience if it were better known.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 297: The Crooked Path of Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) [PART 4: THE CONCLUSION]

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Wed, 4 Nov 2026 05:00:00 -0600

Doesn't he look like a Mario Puzo character here?

Edward D. Wood, Jr. was not in a good place—careerwise, healthwise, or otherwise—in 1975. He was still writing short stories and articles for various pornographic magazines, along with the occasional dirty paperback, but he wasn't nearly as productive as a writer as he'd been just a few years previously. (Ed was at his most prolific from 1968 to 1973.) Ed's film career by then consisted of making X-rated loops and writing screenplays for other directors. And, by my count, only one more of those scripts would actually be produced in Eddie's lifetime.

As poorly as Ed was doing back then, one of his old cronies from the 1950s, actor Timothy Farrell, was doing even worse. Under his real name, Timothy Sperl, he'd been tried and found guilty of misconduct in his role as a Los Angeles county marshal—illegally dispatching his subordinates to work at campaign events for a politician named Jim Hayes, then covering up the evidence of this. As with the Watergate scandal, which was raging at the same time, the Sperl case was as much about the coverup as the crime itself.

After two months of damning testimony by Sperl's coworkers, Judge Richard A. Gadbois determined that the star of Jail Bait (1954) and Glen or Glenda (1953) had falsified timesheets, misappropriated funds, destroyed radio logs, and interfered with civil service examinations. He was looking at a six-month prison sentence, a $500 fine (that's about $3,200 today), and four years of probation. In addition, he had been publicly humiliated, and his reputation was tarnished beyond repair.

But his story wasn't over. As we shall soon see, there were more twists in the Timothy Sperl saga.

Podcast Tuesday: "Blow Up Your TV"

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Tue, 3 Nov 2026 09:37:17 -0600

Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke bicker on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Garry Marshall served a long and productive apprenticeship in show business before creating the megahit Happy Days in the 1970s. He wrote jokes for standup comedians and late night shows, then graduated to writing prime time sitcoms. One of the most famous shows he worked for in the mid-1960s was The Dick Van Dyke Show. Not only was this series a critically-acclaimed classic with very decent ratings, it also put Garry in contact with some people who were important figures in his life, such as creator Carl Reiner and director Jerry Paris.

I've been watching Dick Van Dyke reruns for decades now, but doing These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast has caused me to notice things in the show that I might have missed before. In particular, a 1966 episode called "Bad Reception in Albany" struck me as a precursor to Happy Days. The plot has comedy writer Rob Petrie (Van Dyke) trying and failing to watch a televised fashion show in an Albany, NY hotel overrun with rowdy, drunken conventioneers. It seems that a fraternal organization called the Seals have descended upon Albany the same weekend that Rob is there, causing him no end of trouble. Years later, Happy Days would have its own fraternal organization, the Leopards, and they would get into similar booze-fueled shenanigans.

This week on the podcast, we're talking about "Bad Reception" and the importance of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the history of Happy Days. As usual, this leads to us talking about a whole variety of subjects. If that interests you whatsoever, click the play button below.

Identifying the second-stringers from Little Golden Books

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Mon, 2 Nov 2026 23:09:46 -0600

Not all of them are still superstars in 2026.

Like generations of American children since the 1940s, I grew up with Simon & Schuster's Little Golden Books. I was born in the mid-1970s, so my fondest memories of that venerable, much-loved literary franchise are of the titles released during that specific time period. From about 1973 to 1978, the standard back cover art for Little Golden Books featured a train populated by various licensed characters. Just seeing that familiar, friendly picture brings back a wave of nostalgia for me. I must have spent many accumulated hours studying it in my younger days, and I was glad to see it again on social media earlier today.

Upon closer inspection, though, I have a question: Who the hell are some of these characters?

The Beatles gave us a glimpse of their possible future... on their last song

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Mon, 2 Nov 2026 17:10:53 -0600

No longer hungry: The Beatles as they appeared during their final photo shoot.

The future we didn't get.

To me, the breakup of The Beatles is no great mystery. It's simple math. When the group started in 1960, its members were about 20 years old and hungry for rock stardom and everything that went with it—women, money, houses, cars, publicity, screaming fans, etc. When the group ended in 1970, these men were about 30 years old and had had plenty of all that stuff. Too much, in fact. At every meal, no matter how delicious, there comes a point when you have to push your chair away from the table and declare that you've had enough. And so, they walked away under their own power while they still could.

I'm reminded of comedian Mitch Hedberg's description of pancakes: "All exciting at first, but then by the end, you're sick of 'em."

Many of The Beatles' contemporaries, like The Rolling Stones and The Who, decided to stay at the banquet for decades, even after the deaths of core members. Even the always-squabbling Kinks managed to outlast them. But the Fab Four remained stubbornly broken up, with each member of the quartet pursuing a solo career. Fans have naturally been curious about what kinds of albums John, Paul, George, and Ringo would have made if they had stayed together through the 1970s and beyond. Some fans have even created compilation albums and playlists with tracks taken from various Beatle solo LPs.

But in 1970, just as they were disintegrating, The Beatles gave us a humorous glimpse into their own possible future as a band were they to remain together. Yes, I think there's a somewhat obscure Beatles B-side that demonstrates what would have happened to The Beatles if they hadn't broken up. And this song occupies a unique and important place in the group's discography.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 296: The Crooked Path of Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) [PART 3]

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 05:00:00 -0500

After this series, I may never read or write another word about Timothy Farrell ever again.

I learned a valuable lesson from the last two articles in this series. Namely, if I'm ever going to finish this series about B-movie actor turned disgraced lawman Timothy Farrell aka Timothy Sperl, I'm going to have to stick to just the highlights. Or the lowlights, I guess.

So where were we? Okay, it was May 1974, and Sperl's criminal trial was underway. Witnesses were testifying about Sperl's alleged crimes as an LA. county marshal, which included: misappropriating funds, assigning his men to work at campaign events for Supervisor Jim Hayes, falsifying timesheets, destroying records, and interfering with civil service exams to favor particular candidates. Let's jump back into the timeline:

I've just seen what I've been told is 'Everything'

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 22:35:31 -0500

Nathan Fielder (left) questions Elizabeth Holmes in You Can See Everything.

What the hell did I just watch?

But can you, really?

If it's possible to emerge from a three-hour movie knowing less about its subject than you did going in, then that's the experience I had watching Nathan Fielder's You Can See Everything, his supposedly all-access look at now-imprisoned Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes.

After emerging from this surprisingly dreamlike and artsy film, I'm not sure if Holmes is a master manipulator or someone who genuinely cannot distinguish lies from the truth. I'm not sure how sincere Nathan Fielder, known for his deadpan demeanor and high-concept stunts/pranks (like Dumb Starbucks), intends this film to be. I'm not even 100% sure how to pronounce the name of actress Amanda Seyfried, who famously portrayed Holmes in Hulu's The Dropout and who reprises the role here. And, yes, that last one comes up as an issue in the film.

Is this movie a documentary about Holmes, revealing the flesh-and-blood woman behind the scandalous headlines? Sort of, though the lady herself disappears (to a Texas prison) about halfway through and is "present" only through brief phone calls and a hologram after that. Is it a meta-narrative about Fielder trying to make a movie about Holmes? Sort of, though Fielder doesn't really let us in on his editing process (which must have been an ordeal in and of itself). Is it a sequel to The Dropout? Again, sort of, though Seyfried is the only returning cast member from that series. Is it a three-hour meditation on the slippery, elusive nature of truth itself? That may be the most accurate label I can give it.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 295: The Crooked Path of Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) [PART 2]

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Wed, 21 Oct 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Things were looking shady for Timothy Farrell in the mid-1970s.

NOTE: It had been my sincere hope to bring this series about actor Timothy Farrell to an end with today's article. However, as I began assembling this second installment, I realized I had far too many articles to sort through. I simply hadn't counted on Farrell's 1974 court case generating as much publicity as it did. This article started growing exponentially larger and did not seem like it was close to reaching a conclusion. In other words, I goofed. Rather than releasing nothing this week, I decided to publish what I had. Please bear with me. One way or another, I will bring this thing to a conclusion... eventually. Just not now. J.B.

A week ago today, we were discussing the up-and-down life of Timothy Farrell, a wavy-haired Los Angeles theater, film, and television actor who was part of Ed Wood's repertory company in the 1950s, appearing in Glen or Glenda (1953), The Violent Years (1956), and Jail Bait (1954). Under his real name, Timothy Sperl, he had an almost entirely separate career as a Los Angeles county marshal that started in 1947 and ended in 1974 amid allegations of corruption, embezzlement, and conspiracy. He then retreated from the public eye and died in obscurity but was one of the interview subjects in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992).

More than a half-century later, questions still remain about Timothy Sperl's very public downfall. Was he really taking advantage of his job for financial and political gain or was he unfairly targeted by his enemies because he tried to increase minority representation in the marshal ranks and improve living conditions in the Los Angeles jails? Since the actor/lawman is dead and can no longer speak for himself, we are forced to rely on what various California newspapers reported about him decades ago. In that spirit, let us jump back to Friday, January 25, 1974, the day after Sperl was hit with a nine-count criminal indictment. He had already retained legal counsel, attorney Paul Caruso.

Podcast Tuesday: "Turd Ferguson: Assignment Tampa Bay"

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 08:10:41 -0500

Norman D. Golden II and Burt Reynolds in Cop and a Half.

Remember when cops dominated movies and TV? When I was growing up, they were the closest thing we had to real-life superheroes. From the 1970s to the 1990s, we thrilled to the big- screen and small-screen adventures of maverick plainclothesmen who drove flashy cars, carried powerful guns, routinely roughed up (or just flat-out killed) suspects before bringing them to trial, flagrantly ignored the rules, and infuriated their stressed-out superiors. They did what they had to do to keep the scum off the streets and protect the citizens. Sometimes, they were lone wolves. Other times, they'd be given humorously mismatched partners, who didn't even need to be cops. But we loved everything about them, right down to the clever catchphrases and gratuitous car chases.

That time seems very distant today and impossible to revive or replicate in the 21st century. Too much has happened since the '90s. Too many sad, scary headlines. Nevertheless, in this week's installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we are revisiting the era of the fictional supercop. In particular, we are reviewing Henry Winkler's Cop and a Half (1993) starring Burt Reynolds. This movie was made during the post-Happy Days years when Henry walked away from acting and tried to reestablish himself as a producer and director.

But Cop and a Half wasn't just a straightforward cop movie! Nope. Burt's character, Detective Nick McKenna, was given an unlikely partner: a wisecracking eight-year-old named Devon Butler (newcomer Norman D. Golden II). You have to understand, this was just a few years after Home Alone (1990). America wanted stories about precocious, resourceful kids who could make helpless fools of the grownups around them. And Hollywood was more than happy to supply these stories. You'll hear all about it on this week's show, which is conveniently available right here:

Where is God in Ken Russell's 'The Devils'?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 11:35:30 -0500

Oliver Reed gives a tortured performance in The Devils.

I don't know who or what runs the universe. It might be a wise, benevolent, and all-powerful God. It might be nobody at all. Either answer is bound to disappoint somebody. But what I can be fairly sure of is that anybody who claims to know definitively what God is and what God wants—and has the evidence to "prove" it—is either being dishonest or delusional.

I don't necessarily mean that as a complaint. There are considerable benefits to people claiming to speak on God's behalf, even if it's all baloney. In his "Sky Cake" routine, comedian Patton Oswalt explains how there would be no civilization as we know it today if "weaklings" in the past hadn't invented religion. But, human nature being what it is, we invariably take it too far. People will always want power, money, and status. We also want to impose our personal beliefs on large portions of the population, the more the better. And these desires have driven us to do awful things to one another in the name of God.

All this brings me to Ken Russell's The Devils (1971), a long-suppressed, much-censored film just now being released to theaters in its uncut glory. I'd been hearing about this infamous movie ever since I started hanging around Usenet movie forums in the 1990s, but I'd never even bothered to track down any version of it, since I knew I'd just be seeing a censored print. Now that an uncensored Devils is playing on theaters across the country, however, I knew I had to see it.

Was 'Help!' the first Beatles concept album?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 12:03:45 -0500

The Help! soundtrack captures The Beatles at a transitional time.

The Beatles evolved a great deal between their debut album, Please Please Me (1963), and their farewell album, Let It Be (1970). During those seven incredibly eventful years, the group's songs became more adventurous and experimental, both lyrically and sonically, and their albums became more ambitious in scope. There's a world of difference between Beatles for Sale (1964) and Abbey Road (1969), even though they were recorded by the same four guys from Liverpool, just a few years apart.

On the cusp: The Beatles in 1965.

In the early days, The Beatles' albums were extensions of their live concert performances. Each LP was simply a grab bag of whatever tracks the group happened to be working on at the time, generally a combination of Lennon-McCartney originals (with occasional Harrison contributions) and some rock, R&B, and country covers. It was a good formula that resulted in several classic LPs that remain popular today.

But the Fab Four stopped touring in mid-career, which in many ways liberated them creatively. They no longer had to reproduce their songs onstage, so they were free to make music that could only emerge from a recording studio with all its sonic trickery. The group's lyrics changed, too. While their early albums are dominated by simple love songs—boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, etc.—their later LPs could tackle any number of social or psychological themes or even indulge in surrealism and pure abstraction.

There is so much difference between the group's early work and its later work, in fact, that most fans tend to divide their albums into two major categories: Early Beatles and Late Beatles. But some experts have proposed a third category: Middle Beatles, referring to that brief but productive time circa 1965-66 when they were first showing signs of artistic growth and dabbling in Dylanesque folk rock. The two best-known Middle Beatles albums are Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966). But I'd like to add a third LP to this roster: the soundtrack to the group's second movie, Help! (1965). In revisiting this somewhat-neglected and underappreciated album, I have discovered some remarkably consistent themes throughout it. Help! is so cohesive that I would be comfortable calling it The Beatles' earliest concept album, predating Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).

Does that sound preposterous? Stick with me.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 294: The Crooked Path of Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) [PART 1]

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Tue, 13 Oct 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Actor/lawman Timothy Farrell aka Timothy Sperl and his attorney, Paul Caruso.

Actor Timothy Farrell.

Ed Wood fans know mustachioed, curly-haired actor Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) from his roles in Glen or Glenda (1953), Jail Bait (1954), and The Violent Years (1956). A veteran of the Los Angeles theater scene, Farrell appeared in films and TV shows fairly regularly in the 1950s. His acting career seems to have petered out sometime in the 1960s. The IMDb says he worked on the cautionary educational films of producer Sid Davis as late as 1968, but I'm not convinced of this. I know I spotted him in a 1964 episode of the soap opera Day in Court.

Apart from the Wood movies, Tim's greatest accomplishment as an actor was playing the villainous Umberto Scalli in three low-budget flicks produced by George Weiss: The Devil's Sleep (1949), Racket Girls (1951), and Dance Hall Racket (1953). (I may have to cover the Umberto Scalli trilogy someday.) While Farrell was occasionally cast as authority figures, like cops and doctors, I find him more convincing as slimy underworld types. There's just something vaguely unwholesome and unsettling about him. His most convincing performance is as the volatile, easily-agitated crook Vic Brady in Jail Bait. When Vic warns his young accomplice Don (Clancy Malone), "I'll fix you but good with the cops," you believe him.

Using his real surname, Sperl, Timothy had a lengthy but troubled career in law enforcement that eventually ended in scandal and disgrace. I find this terribly interesting because it suggests that the impatient, snarling hoodlum we see in Jail Bait is closer to Timothy's real personality than the reasonable and understanding Dr. Alton in Glen or Glenda. To test this theory, I thought I'd see what the Los Angeles newspapers had to say about Mr. Sperl, both the actor and the cop, over the years.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 293: The Hall of Fame of Western Film Stars (1969)

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Wed, 7 Oct 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Kathy and Ed Wood at Kenne Duncan's wake. Note the book Ed is holding.

Awake, a wake.

There is a sweetly sad quality to the photos of Ed Wood taken in the last decade of his life. Eddie was in freefall by then, physically, personally, and professionally. Years of alcohol abuse had ravaged his face and body, leading to his early death at age 54. His career in show business was faring no better. He was supporting himself entirely through his work in the adult film and publishing industries. And even there, he had to maintain a furious pace just to (almost but not quite) keep up with his creditors. As he spiraled into addiction and poverty, he often took out his frustrations on his wife, Kathy. Ed Wood's last decade was marked by disappointment, uncertainty, violence, and desperation.

And yet, the man in the pictures looks cheerful and content. Not a care in the world, this guy. Sure, you could say that he was simply too soused to worry what was happening to him. He found a fool's paradise at the bottom of a glass and stayed there. But I'd like to think that the optimism that brought him to Hollywood in the 1940s had not abandoned him entirely in the 1970s.

One of the most compelling latter-day photos of Ed Wood was taken at the wake of actor Kenne Duncan in 1972. After years of declining health and declining fortunes, the famed cowboy actor ended his own life by overdosing on barbiturates. Some time later, Eddie and Kathy celebrated his memory by throwing a wake in his honor. They invited such luminaries as Paul Marco, Criswell, David Ward, Nona Carver, and Hope Lugosi. A somewhat grainy, underlit black-and-white photo—complete with handwritten notes by Kathy—captures all of these people, plus figures I believe are Marg Usher (Paul's agent) and actress Mona McKinnon. Eddie, drunk as a lord, is leaning against Kathy and holding a book: Ernest N. Corneau's The Hall of Fame of Western Film Stars (1969).

Naturally, I was curious. What was this strange, obscure book? What secrets might it contain?

Podcast Tuesday: "Twenty Feet from Fonzie"

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Tue, 6 Oct 2026 07:42:27 -0500

A Fonzie presidency would bankrupt this country.

The dinosaurs are long gone, but some of their footprints still remain on the surface of the earth. You don't even have to leave the United States to see some of them. There are dino prints in Connecticut, for god's sake. Think of that: these huge, terrifying creatures lived millions of years ago before going extinct, and yet their tracks are probably within driving distance of a Target today.

I think you know where I'm going with this. The nostalgic sitcom Happy Days (1974-1984) has been off the air, extinct, for over 40 years, and yet its tracks can still be seen. If you know where to look, that is. While the show debuted in January 1974, it didn't really become a multimedia pop cultural phenomenon until 1976 during its third season. This was a pivotal year for Happy Days. The show's breakout character, Fonzie (Henry Winkler), moved in with the Cunninghams, and the entire series was reformatted so that it could be filmed in front of a live, boisterous studio audience. It also gained an immortal catchphrase: "Sit on it!"

The schlockmeisters and opportunists smelled money in the air, and they didn't wait to cash in. Soon, stores were flooded with Happy Days and Fonzie-branded merchandise—some of it authorized, some of it bootleg. In the spring of 1976, London Records wanted a piece of the action, so they released a novelty single called "The Fonz Song" by a manufactured group called The Heyettes. It was a breakthrough hit in several markets and even made the national charts. Was that enough? No. London Records decided that a full-length Heyettes album was in order. The result was Fonzie, Fonzie, He's Our Man. Naturally, we're talking all about it on this week's installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.

Some real talent went into this LP. The Heyettes were accomplished session singers, and the producer and arranger were longtime music industry veterans. But does any of this add up to a great (or even listenable) album? My cohost and I have some thoughts, and you can hear them by clicking on the podcast below.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 292: The Lascivious World of A.C. Stevens & Ed D. Wood, Jr. (2008)

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Of all the Ed Wood sets ever released, this is definitely one of them.

lascivious [las·civ·i·ous, lə-ˈsi-vē-əs] (adj.):
filled with or showing sexual desire; lewd, lustful

Over the decades, Ed Wood's films have been bundled together in various box sets, first on VHS, then DVD, and now Blu-ray. I've definitely purchased my share of them over the years. Maybe you have, too. There's a strange quality in Eddie's movies that makes you want to see more of them right away, so it makes sense to sell them in bulk. They're like potato chips or pretzels, difficult to stop at just one. Let's see now....

The monolith.

The first such anthology I ever bought was Rhino's The Ed Wood Collection (1995), a three-tape set that came in a faux-angora box and included Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Glen or Glenda (1953), and Bride of the Monster (1955). That pink, fuzzy monolith still sits among my Wood memorabilia today. I vaguely remember a blue version existing, but I can't find it. Did I dream it?

Then there was Image Entertainment's The Worst of Ed Wood (2000), a four-DVD set. It contained the same films as the previous Rhino set, plus Jail Bait (1954). Its Plan 9 disc also included the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992). When I think of this set, I remember buying it at a Borders in Flint, MI on a freezing cold day, using money I'd made as a customer service rep for General Motors.

Just a few years later, Image released The Ed Wood Box (2004), a six-disc collection that included everything from The Worst of Ed Wood but added Night of the Ghouls (1959) and The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1996). It handily makes the previous Image set obsolete, but I never bought it because I already had Night and Haunted separately.

A staple of cutout bins for years was Passport Video's two-disc The Ed Wood Collection: A Salute to Incompetence (2007), which included Plan 9, Glenda, Bride, Ghouls, Jail Bait (in its rare director's cut form) and The Violent Years (1956), plus a bonus featurette called The Ed Wood Story. For some reason, this once-plentiful title has become scarce in recent years. A shame, too, as it contains the longer Rhino cut of Glenda rather than the shortened, censored version included in the Image sets.

The landmark DVD collection that inspired this series of articles was S'more Entertainment's Big Box of Wood (2011), a six-disc set that included Plan 9, Bride, and Jail Bait, but added The Violent Years (1956), The Sinister Urge (1960), Fugitive Girls (1974), Drop Out Wife (1972), Hot Ice (1978), The Snow Bunnies (1972), The Beach Bunnies (1976), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Trick Shooting with Kenne Duncan (1960), and Crossroad Avenger (1953). The set included new introductions (by Ted Newsom) and various commentary tracks, plus trailers and interviews with Dolores Fuller, Joe Robertson, and Kathy Wood.

It's not a multi-disc set, but After Hours' Cinema's single-disc Ed Wood's Dirty Movies (2014) contained Eddie's final directorial effort, The Young Marrieds (1972), plus two additional titles: Nympho Cycler (1971) and Shot on Location (1972). Eddie's participation in Nympho is undisputed—he cowrote the script and appears on camera in a supporting role—but whether he worked on Shot is controversial.

The most significant Wood collection of recent years has been Severin's three-disc Blu-ray set, Hard Wood (2024). It contained The Young Marrieds, plus Necromania (1971), The Only House in Town (1971), and Shotgun Wedding (1963), plus a variety of loops, featurettes, and commentary tracks.

I think you can agree, that's a lot of Ed Wood collections and box sets. And there are still more I don't own, like The Ed Wood Curiosities Collection (2023), which adds the much-disputed Revenge of the Virgins (1959) to the mix. Then there's The Ed Wood Collection, Volume One (2009); The Ed D. Wood Jr. Collection (year unknown); and Ed Wood: The Dark Collection (unknown). Most of these are simply recycling the same old titles: Plan 9, Bride, Glenda, the usual suspects. But today, I want to talk about a three-disc DVD collection that's been largely ignored by the Ed Wood fan community.

The value of art can't be listed, measured, graded, or ranked... and we need to stop pretending it can be

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 15:00:34 -0500

This might or might not be the greatest movie of all time. That's up to you to decide.

The New York Times recently released its list of the 100 greatest television shows of the 21st century. In case you haven't read it yet, here's a spoiler: it's pointless, meaningless horse manure. Judging by my social media feed the last couple of days, people seem to have forgotten that. There is a widespread delusion that The New York Times is somehow "in charge" of which shows are important or worth watching.

Reality check: It isn't. You are. You, the person reading this article now, get to decide which are the greatest TV shows of this century. The ones you watch, the ones you like, the ones that mean something to you—those are the greatest. Never ever lose sight of that. The New York Times doesn't know diddly. They can't. It's unknowable. You can only know which shows you think are the greatest; you don't get to decide for anyone else.

There's a British film magazine called Sight and Sound published by the BFI since 1952. Every ten years, they release a list of the greatest films of all time. In the most recent one from 2022, the winner was Chantal Akerman's deliberately slow and methodical art film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Many disagreed with this choice, and they expressed their anger in various articles and videos. Bizarrely, their wrath was largely aimed at Akerman's film, as if the movie had arrogantly elected itself the greatest of all time. Instead, the haters should have been angry with a stupid system that dupes us into thinking that the Sight and Sound poll is somehow meaningful. It's not. It's just the fancy version of an internet listicle.

The strange, twisted world of Beatles soundalikes!

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:12:42 -0500

These lovely ladies are not The Beatles, as you may have guessed.

I wish I had a great story about becoming a Beatles fan, but in truth, I found the group's music in a clunky, roundabout way. That's the case with most of my lifelong interests. In the late 1980s, when I was in junior high school, my older sister briefly became friends with a somewhat artsy girl whom I will call Willow. That friendship ended acrimoniously, but it lasted just long enough for Willow to dub some cassettes of a few Beatles albums for my sister. And she, in turn, dubbed some copies for me.

That's how I first heard Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), Abbey Road (1969), The Beatles (White Album) (1968), and Rubber Soul (1965): through muddy, third-generation cassettes that I listened to on a portable tape player. I can still remember how I'd listen to "Within You, Without You" and imagine myself as an English secret agent deployed to India, chasing some scoundrel through a public market. There was just something about that track, with its exotic instrumentation and dry, reserved vocals, that ignited my imagination.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 291: "I Woke Up Early the Day I Died - An Ed Wood Jr. Inspired Horror Short Story" (2002)

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 05:00:00 -0500

Kailleaugh Andersson took Ed Wood to a strange place: Scotland.

There's a whole universe out there of Ed Wood-inspired fanart: comics, music, film, plays, etc. And I've reviewed a great deal of that material in this series. But not all of this stuff reaches me on its own. Far from it. Occasionally, readers of this column will hip me to some bit of obscure Woodiana that I might not otherwise have heard of. Recently, for example, the redoubtable Bob Blackburn told me about a short story called "I Woke Up Early the Day I Died" by Scottish author Kailleaugh Andersson that is available on Amazon for the Kindle. The story's two-star rating wasn't promising, but the $0.99 price tag was, so I took the leap of faith.

I could not find out much background information on either the story or its author. Kailleaugh Andersson once maintained a personal website, but this has not been updated in years. His Amazon biography describes him as a prolific horror author whose stories have been published (by the hundreds!) since the 1980s, sometimes in anthologies, other times in magazines or webzines. His wife, Alex Severin, has a number of books available on Amazon and still seems to be active. Maybe Kailleaugh is, too. But is his Ed Wood-inspired story worth your time and your 99 cents? Let's find out!

Podcast Tuesday: "Upstairs, Downstairs" or "Encyclopedia Blues"

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 10:24:21 -0500

Debra Jo Rupp, Marion Ross, and Kurtwood Smith on That '70s Show.

Happy Days (1974-1984) was part of a nostalgia cycle that started in the late 1960s and kept going well into the 1980s, leaving numerous TV shows, movies, stage musicals, and albums in its wake. When Happy Days finally breathed its last in the summer of 1984, you'd think the cycle was truly over, too. Nope. Not even close. Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future (1985) showed that there was plenty of juice left in that particular turnip. Stand by Me (1986) and Dirty Dancing (1987) proved it was no fluke. With The Wonder Years (1988-1993), nostalgia returned to television. By then, the bygone era being wistfully evoked was the late 1960s.

And so it continued. One of the big trends of the 1990s was nostalgia for the 1970s, though the nostalgia for that decade was about half-sincere and half-sarcastic. The pinnacle of this phenomenon was Fox's rambunctious comedy That '70s Show (1998-2006). Much more so than The Wonder Years—which was a thoughtful, occasionally weighty series—That '70s Show was the obvious spiritual successor to Happy Days. Like Happy Days, it followed a group of average Midwestern teenagers through various social, romantic, scholastic, and domestic adventures. Both shows were even set in Wisconsin and both shows existed largely to entertain rather than educate or enlighten.

During its initial run, Happy Days acknowledged its sitcom roots by welcoming classic guest stars like Danny Thomas, Elinor Donahue, Harriet Nelson, and Jane Wyatt. That '70s Show did something very similar by casting Marion Ross from Happy Days as Bernice, the demanding mother of patriarch Red Forman (Kurtwood Smith). In the November 1998 episode "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," Bernice has a longstanding grudge against Red's wife Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp), and it's up to Red and Kitty's son Eric (Topher Grace) to keep the peace. Or try to.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we discuss That '70s Show and Marion Ross' participation therein. We review "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" and talk about how our feelings toward That '70s Show have evolved over the years. We invite you to join us.

A weird, forgotten chapter of 'Simpsons' history has been rediscovered

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Blevins) — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 14:28:06 -0500

The Simpsons consult a family therapist in this forgotten 1989 cartoon.

By the time cartoonist Matt Groening unleased The Simpsons on an unwitting world in 1987—it debuted as a segment on Fox's live-action sketch comedy The Tracey Ullman Show—the era of the theatrical animated short was long over. Movie audiences of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s were accustomed to getting cartoons before features, and studios like Disney, MGM, and Warner Bros. famously produced them by the hundreds. Characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Tom & Jerry thrived in this medium for decades. This was an era we now call the Golden Age of Animation.

But animation was commonplace on television by the 1960s. Ex-MGM animators Joseph Hanna and William Barbera proved that cheap, made-for-TV 'toons could be successful, and other producers followed suit. People who wanted to see cartoons could do so at home whenever they wanted, so movie studios phased out their animated shorts over the course of that turbulent decade. From the 1970s on, theatrical cartoons were parceled out only as occasional treats, usually in conjunction with children's films. That's the way it still is today. If you see a Pixar feature, for example, you expect a short cartoon first. But you won't get one with most live-action movies.