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Sunday, January 19, 2014

Saturday Night Epizoodic Blog




BATMAN

David Wayne as the Mad Hatter. Jervis Tetch going on about his "Hyet Fectoreh".  My sister-in law gave us a video tape back when we were not Connected, and it was full of Batman episodes. This pair was our favorite!



His Mesmerizer popping up from his topper. His rather tatty topper.
Tetch is obsessed with capturing the twelve jurors wot sent him up - and their hats; the thirteenth hat is...Batman's cowl!

I have been amused by Tetch's name being a play on the mental state of many mercurial hatters.
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I am ignoring Wonder Woman this even, as grandchild was intent on doing Playstation things, and I'm not a Debra Winger fan.

POP QUIZ!



STAR TREK - Gamesters of Triskelion
Disembodied, flabby brains betting quatloos on the outcome of combat by thralls. I almost expected to hear a "ROLL TIDE!". 
Kirk woos his drill-thrall, Dora Belair:
Angelique Pettyjohn
Wait...his drill-thrall Shahna.



Wooing...



That's pretty much the story, except that Spock finds Kirk and the others, and takes them away.



The End.
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SVENGOOLIE - The Mole Men

This is a strange little movie, cobbled from stock footage and B-actors. It features John Agar, Hugh Beaumont, Alan Napier (who was apparently born wizened), and Cynthia Patrick as the...chick.




Alan Napier

Click here to open new window 
The movie was padded with an intro by Dr. Frank C. Baxter, who was the affable science guy in Frank Capra's Bell Labs science specials like "Our Mr. Sun" and "Hemo the Magnificent". Baxter (the provenance of whose doctorate is hard to ascertain) delivers a monologue about different hollow earth theories. While historically interesting, it is not the stuff of Universal Horror Movies, and comes across as a desperate attempt to lend gravitas to a weak movie premise. At least they could have done a VO with Paul Frees....

Let Dr. Baxter explain himself:

























That's all I can wring from this even', still being flu-ey and all. Happy week!

5 comments:

Michael W said...

*Loved* the Mad Hatter's hypnotic hat. One of the better effects from the old television series (and provided a nice punctuation mark at the end of the second episode. As clear a sign of "I shall return" as anyone could wish for).

"Gamesters of Triskelion". Anyone besides me ever wonder what the heck disembodied brains did with their winnings?

"The Mole People". Yeah, the Bell Labs science films. Back in the 60s you couldn't go through the Travis County School System without sitting through them at least once (along with the Disney Science films and taking at least one field trip to the Butter Krust Bakeries). While Dr. Baxter is an old friend I would have to agree with you that "The Mole People" is indeed an odd sort of duck in the Universal horror stable. My theory is that director Virgil Vogel and screenwriter Laszlo Gorog realized they didn't have much of a plot and felt obliged to pad it out in places. They had the germ of an interesting story, but not much more. Perhaps an accidental breakthrough to the surface by the titular mole people, attracting the attention of local authorities, might've provided much more excitement.

Sorry to hear you're still plastered by the flu. Right now you probably sound more like Jervis Tetch than David Wayne did.

Jay said...

What's wrong with thIs picture? Uhura's sitting in the captains' chair! Everything else seems OK.

Angelique Pettyjohns' (The "drill thrall".) career went downhill after appearing in this Trek episode and she ended up in porno films. Sadly (For other reasons.) she is no longer with us.

Sorry the bugs are keeping you low. Well, as you said ... Happy weak ... uh ... week!

The Aardvark said...

@ Jay - I met Pettyjohn at Magnum Opus Con wa-a-a-ay back in 1987 (the same con where Patrick Troughton passed away).

She appeared as Dora Belair in "The Wizard of Speed and Time". She was a personable gal. Sad to learn about her other film choices.

@ Michael - "what the heck disembodied brains did with their winnings?"

Bitcoin.

Michael W said...

Reading over your comments again on "The Thirteenth Hat" caused a thought to occur to me that I'd never considered before. Could Batman legally testify at a trial? Any defense attorney worth his salt could have Batman's testimony tossed out of court on the basis that (A) Batman isn't technically a real person, and (B) do we actually know that the person in the Batman costume is indeed the same person who is able to provide testimony?

The Aardvark said...

Everyone KNOWS that every glove has a distinctive fingerprint. They could print the putative Cowled Crusader for an ID.

(I was being disingenuous about the prints, but a quick perusal of the webs surgically removes the tongue from my cheek.)