Sunday Funnies!

Click on the comics page for a larger, more easily read version.

By Shelby Sampson, originally published in Manhunt #1 (1973).

A Sunday Funny by Gilbert Shelton

 Here's a little down-home verse with the great underground cartoonist Gilbert Shelton. (Click on any panel for a larger, more easily read version.)

The preceding appeared in a few different forms in underground comics anthologies during the 1970s. This particular version was published in "Feds 'n' Heads" (1978).

Silent horror comedy ala the 1970s

Grave Danger (1973)
Starring: Dan Formento, Leslie Donahue, Janice Shaw, and Mary Perry

Director: Craig Highberger

Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

A vampire (Formento) on the hunt for young women to drain of blood encounters a mortal (Donahue) who reminds him of a love he thought lost long ago. But is the world ready for a human/vampire love romance?

 

Fifty years ago, Craig Highberger rounded up a bunch of high school friends and their siblings and made "Grave Danger". For a film made entirely by teenagers, it is surprisingly good. In fact, it puts any number of low-budget horror films that came both before and after it, and which were usually made by vastly more experienced people than Highberger and his pals. Heck, the sequence where the vampire and the leading lady meet for the first time rivals stuff you might see from top-of-the-line directors. 

Half-assed research into what the various people involved with this film indicated that only Highberger went onto having any sort of career in media--and his appears to be a minor one at that. (This is too bad, because there was a lot of raw talent on display in this film.)

--

And now, a joke inspired by an event in "Grave Danger"...

Touch the Tits of Dracula!

(The chilling sequel to Taste the Blood of Dracula!)

Musical Monday with Oingo Boingo

Before they were Oingo Boingo, Danny Elfman and his fellow bandmembers were known as the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo and they performed covers of 1930s and 1940s songs while putting on bizarre and elaborate shows.

This music video featured in today's post was made as a proof-of-concept/test shoot for what eventually became the full-length movie "Forbidden Zone" (1979), directed by Richard Elfman.

Johnny (1977)
Starring: Marie-Pascale Elfman and the Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo
Director: Richard Elfman
Rating: Seven of Ten Stars

Musical Monday with Hot Butter

Nearly 50 years ago, in 1972, Hot Butter (keyboardist Stan Free) released his cover of Gershon Kingsley's immortal, history-making tune "Popcorn." This is the version that everyone from lone keyboardists to death-metal bands to symphony orchestras have covered rather than Kingsley's original.

Here it is, along with an interpretative dance which should give all of your budding dancers and choreographers hope. If these people couple make it on some French television show in the early 1970s, then you can make your dreams a reality, no matter how insecure you feel!

Musical Monday with Elton John

Elton John has been writing (and co-writing with long-time collaborator Berne Taupin) beautiful and/or energetic pop songs since the late 1960s. He was supposed to be doing his retirement tour in 2020, but the Covid-19 bullshit put a stop to it. John didn't even get to finish the very first concert of the tour, as he lost his voice due to what was diagnosed as walking pneumonia.

John has written and performed some of our all-time favorite songs here at Shades of Gray, including "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", "Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding", "Candle in the Wind", "Rocket Man", and "I'm Still Standing". To get your week off to a good start, we bring you John straight from 1970 and the original video for "Your Song".

One of the greatest haunted house movies

The Legend of Hell House (1973)
Starring: Roddy McDowall, Clive Revill, Pamela Franklin, and Gail Hunnicutt
Director: John Hough
Rating: Ten of Ten Stars

A parapsychologist (Revill) travels to Balasco House--also known as "Hell House" and reported to be the worst haunted house in the entire world--with his wife (Hunnicutt) and two psychics (McDowell and Franklin) in order to gain indisputable, scientific evidence for the existence of ghosts and other supernatural phenomena. But the evil that dwells within the sprawling mansion never gives up its secrets easily....


"The Legend of Hell House" is one of the greatest haunted house movies ever made. It works, first, because the director and cinematographer manage to convey the sense that the house itself is alive and a character in the movie, and, second, because of the great peformances of the stars, and, third, because it features a script so tight that not a single line of dialogue or action on the part of the characters doesn't feed into the suspense and horror of the film--horror that keeps mounting until the final twist at the movie's end.

This is a movie where everything is done right. The cinematography and lighting is supreme, the actors are all perfect in their parts--with Roddy McDowall as the reluctant psychic shining even brighter than the rest--and the pacing is perfect throughout.

I wish the producers and directors of moden horror movies (particularly ghost movies) would take a look at "Legend of Hell House". This film is far scarier than any ghost movie of recent vintage.

Musical Monday: The B52's performing "Give Me Back My Man"!

The B-52's are among the greatest New Wave bands to rise to fame during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Their presentation style was also among the most retro of all of them, which means they fit right in here at Shades of Gray... especially given this video for "Give Me Back My Man" is in black-and-white.



Some of you may be aware that I frequently post random tables intended to inspire roleplaying game adventure ideas (and to just amuse) over at the NUELOW Games blog. Whether you are or not, I am bringing that practice to this blog, for, at the very least, one post.

WHO TOOK HER MAN? (Roll 1d12)
1. The Queen of the 57th Dimension.
2. The Vampire of Mulholland Drive.
3. The Sorceress of Zoom.
4. The Sirines of Shipwreck Cove.
5. The Love Witch.
6. A Sharknado.
7. Lady Satan.
8. The Mermaid of Blood Bay.
9. Anal-Probing Greys from Ganyamede.
10. Herbert West, Mad Scientist.
11. Khefra, Living Mummy Princess of Egypt.
12. Russian Hackers.

'They Saved Hitler's Brain': A bad movie that didn't improve when expanded by 30 mins

They Saved Hitler's Brain (1974 (?))
Starring: Lots of mustaches and a couple of blondes.
Director: David Bradley and someone working for "Paragon Production"
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

"They Saved Hitler's Brain" is a television edit of "The Madmen of Madragor", a film about a clumsy international conspiracy orchestrated by Nazis and Hitler's head-in-a-jar from a diamond-rich South American country. For the bulk of the details about the film, read my review of the original version by clicking here.

When producers looked into selling the film to television in the late 1960s, they discovered it was too short for the two-hour programming time block occupied by movies--which needed to be 92 minutes, with the remaining 28 minutes being occupied by commericals.

So, they shot an additional 30 minutes of film, expanding the original plot of "The Mad Men of Madragor" to inclue a spy-vs-spy angle with intelligence agencies from around the globe (I think) shooting at each other and performing asassinations in order to make sure that only they have the secret of the super nervegas at the center of the story.

The filmmakers charged with expanding the film TRIED to make their new material match the original footage, but I think budget and time conspired against them. Basically, the agents from the new storyline sport 1970s hairstyles and clothing styles, and they clash when they are intercut with the cast with their 1960s crewcuts and fashions. Government agents cruising around in a VW Bug is a particularly amusing aspect of the additions to the film, even if it wasn't intended to be amusing.

A worse slip-up made in the efforts to expand the film is a continuity gaffe of such epic scale that one wonders if whoever scripted that new half-hour bothered to sit through the original movie; a big deal is made out of the fact that only two scientists know the formula for the deadly nerve gas that Nazis are threatening to unleash on the world. However, in other scenes, the gas formula has already been acquired by "foreign powers", but the antidote is still a well-guarded American secret which makes it useless as a weapon (or so the filmmakers believed, in an innocent time before Islamic suicide bombing psychos started making Nazis look like choir boys).

All in all, the 30 minutes of additional material neither adds or subtracts particularly from the film. It doesn't fix any of the problems with the original, and while it offers a bit more action up front than the film contained originally, it creates new continuity flubs.

"Mad Men of Madragor" still has a slight advantage, though, as it's shorter. Unless you REALLY want to torture yourself, go with the original instead of "They Saved Hitler's Brain"; it may have a sexier title--which I remain astonished that they didn't use on the original film--but "Mad Men" is more to the point.

'Young Frankenstein' is timeless spoof

Young Frankenstein (1974)
Starring: Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, Teri Garr, Peter Boyle, Madeline Khan, and Cloris Leachman
Director: Mel Brooks
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars

Dr. Frederick Frankenstein (Wilder), after spending his youth trying to live down his family's reputation as a bunch of mad scientists and nutty monster-makers, inherits his grandfather's castle and original laboratory... and ends up trying his hand at being a mad scientist and creating monsters. With an illiterate hunchback (Feldman) and a nurse who is well-endowed in every department but brains (Garr), he creates a monster that his grandfather, father, uncles, aunts, cousins, and other mad-scientist relations would be envious of. But can the torch-wielding peasants be far off?


"Young Frankenstein" is one of the all-time classic comedies. Like "High Anxiety", Mel Brooks' spoof of Alfred Hitchcock movies, this film is shows a great affection and respect for the material it is poking fun at--the sequels to the original "Frankenstein" film from Universal, such as "Son of Frankenstein" and "The Ghost of Frankenstein". (And let's face it... as much as we may love those pictures, we've found it worthy of mockery that every single member of the Frankenstein family--with the exception of Baroness Eva Frankenstein in "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man"--who comes into possession of the original monster-making recipe becomes obsessed with creating another one (or reviving the original creature).

And Brook makes fun of all the unintentional hilarious bits of the various Universal Frankentein sequels, makes some of the non-harlious bits--Inspector Krogh from "Son of Frankenstein", a very well-acted, well-written, if idiosyncratic character, that I think it the best part of that film--the objects of spot-on and hilarious lampooning.

While the film's success can be credited in a large part to its hilarious script--which provies a non-stop flow of puns, sight-gags, and insane nonsequitors within the frame of a story that could easily have been featured in a Frankenstein movie from the 1940s--and the best-of-their-careers performances from Gene Wilder, Marty Feldman, and Teri Garr, the fact that Brooks took pains to match the sets, filming techniques, and lighting-styles of the Frankenstein films he's parodying makes this the truly exceptional and effective comedy that it is.

"Young Frankenstein" is a movie for fans of the classic Universal films and lovers of well-crafted satire alike. It is one of Mel Brooks' finest films, and every actor featured is likewise is at their very finest. (Also, where else are you going to see Frankenstein's Monster perform "Putting on the Ritz"?)