Between International Days

This year's International Dance Day is behind us, and International Nude Day is roughly a month away. With this post, we look both forward and backwards.

Sunday Funnies!

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

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

It's a Fanny Friday

Meremay is gone and June is here!

Mermaids and the gnomes are planning to party all month long with their special guest, the Frog King!

We open the month with a drawing that originally appeared as an ad, in the pages of legendary German arts and culture magazine Jugend. It's the sort of illustration that we would use today if we were trying to sell booze to players of old-school fantasy roleplaying games!

It's Fanny Friday!

Mermay continues... and the mermaids continue to emerge from the deep!

'The Lady and the Monster' has both good and bad

The Lady and the Monster (1944)
Starring: Vera Ralston, Richard Arlen, Erich von Stroheim, and Helen Vinson
Director: George Sherman

Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A millionaire's mind is preserved after death through weird science... and he soon begins to telepathically force his will upon others in revenge and to carry on with his evil ways. 

"The Lady and the Monster" is a great-looking film, with stylish sets and beautiful cinematography that takes full advantage of the black-and-white format. The excellent cast--headed by Erich von Stroheim, Vera Ralston, and Richard Arlen--give decent performances despite the fact that they are delivering some truly awful dialogue at times. The film is further undermined slightly by something of a tone-shift at the halfway point, but all in all, the good outweighs the bad here and it's a film that's worth your time. 

And speaking of your time, we are happy to make it easy for you to watch "The Lady and the Monster" by embedding it in this very post, via The Screening Room on YouTube.

(If elements of the story and some of the characters seem familiar, it's possible you'll either read the novel upon which it was based, or seen one of the other two films based upon the same source--"Donovan's Brain" by Curt Siodmak. This was the first screen adaptation, however.)

Fanny Friday

 

May is going swimmingly!

Mermaids continue to frolic in celebration of Mermay here at Shades of Gray!

 

Musical Monday with Childish Gambino & Young Nudy

Little Foot Big Foot (2024)
Starring: Donald Glover, Robert Bynes, Monyett Crump, Oscar Jordan, and Quinta Brunson

Director: Hiro Murai

Rating: Eight of Ten Stars

In a roadhouse during the early 1930s, Johnny & the Pipe Dancers find themselves performing for a rougher-than-usual crowd.

 

"Little Foot Big Foot" is a catchier and more energetically upbeat than-I-expected tune that offers as many musical twists and turns as the video that supports it. And what a remarkable video it is--it's the sort of mini-movie that we were treated to during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Check it out by clicking below: