a halloween filmstrip adventure

For a Halloween treat I am reposting an old favorite of mine GEORGIE (he's the original friendly ghost).
As a 70s kid I couldn't get enough of books about ghosts, ghouls and goblins, from Spooky Tricks to How To Care For Your Monster, I was all about monster books. One of my favorite series featured a friendly little ghostie by the name of Georgie. Naturally, the Halloween adventures were my favorite, but the first of the series was spook-tacular! I found this filmstrip and cassette tape combo on eBay last year and flipped my can!! Take a listen to this encore posting and tell me you ain't happy.

download it here: http://rapidshare.com/files/1330664/Georgie_PopCereal.wmv.html

The Cube (1969)

Jim Henson fans, go find this treasure!!

For old school television nuts (like me), Jim Henson’s The Cube has been something of a Holy Grail. Before the days of the Internet, a video freak would really have to hunt through every video store backroom VHS bootlegger to find themselves a copy (of a copy of a copy…) of this highly original TV production. Thankfully, with obscure video and DVD outlets all over the web, we video hounds can hang up the leashes and press the play button on the DVD remote.

The Cube was an hour long teleplay, created by Jim Henson, that aired only twice as part of the 60s weekly anthology series NBC Experiment in Television. It featured Richard Schaal (Chuckles the Clown from Mary Tyler Moore) as an unwitting every-man who finds himself trapped in a stark white, cube-shaped room. With no knowledge of how he got there or of how he can escape, the Man is visited by a parade of strangers who enter through hidden doors and hatches that are, he discovers, not accessible to him. Each visitor poses something of a conundrum for the Man, never being able to provide him with answers to where? what? or why? but instead piling on even more questions, mostly about philosophical uncertainties of identity, time, and about reality versus illusion.

Henson (creator of the Muppets) directed the trippy teleplay from a script co-written with longtime Muppet’s writing pal Jerry Juhl (Emmet Otter’s Jugband Christmas). In nostalgic retrospect, The Cube is an excellent example of the type of creative and thoughtful (as well as thought provoking) programming that used to be available to television audiences. It’s also a dismal reminder that the writing on today’s television is no longer in the hands of skilled scribes who have honed their craft through years of work and practice, but rather by sycophants who want to show off their hip pop culture references and (not really so) clever dialogue. If only TV Land (the cable channel, that is) would forget trying to latch onto the unreachable IPod audience and turn everyone else on to the long lost television shows like The Cube.


one good place to find this (in B/W and in Color) is at A Different City

a friday the 13th treat

Happy Friday the 13th everyone! There's nothing like an extra day of doom and gloom in the month that harbors Halloween. To celebrate the excessive creepiness I wanted to steer you towards some great links.

Over at Tomb it May Concern David has a couple excellently warped and twisted -- not to mention bloody -- monster finds. Two full comic books based on the stories of Frankenstein and Dracula!

And as a bonus, here's a link to the fantastic site Bubblegum Fink, where the curator likes to make his own bubblegum cards out of the craziest movies. They've done them for Logans Run, A Clockwork Orange, and a bunch of other cool flicks.

Here's his latest, appropriatly designed from the slasher classic Friday the 13th!

Enjoy! And may all your good luck be bad on this most gruesome day.

groovie goolies get together on DVD

PopCereal freaks surely have spent a Saturday morning or two enrapt by the monster mayhem of the Groovie Goolies. And now we men-children can further draw back into our childhood cocoon full of sugar cereal fantasies with the release of an all new DVD collection of the ghoulish Saturday Morning fav cartoon. Just in time for Halloween!


press release for The Groovie Goolies DVD release:


ONE OF THE GROOVIEST CARTOONS FROM THE ‘70S COMES TO DVD AS NAVARRE CORPORATION’S BCI INTRODUCES

“GROOVIE GOOLIES”
The Saturday “Mourning” Collection

Available October 24th For $29.98

Los Angeles, CA – They were the grooviest, most eclectic array of animated monsters ever to hit the small screen in the early ‘70s. Now, thanks to BCI, a wholly owned subsidiary of Navarre Corporation, the latest series from the Filmation catalog will be available on DVD with the release of “Groovie Goolies.” 16 digitally remastered episodes will be released on October 24th under BCI’s Ink & Paint brand, and from media company and underlying rights owner, Entertainment Rights Plc (“ER”), at a suggested retail price of $29.98.

“As evidenced by our previously announced lineup, Filmation released some of the most memorable animated series ever to hit television in the ‘70s and ‘80s,” said Jeff Hayne, Director of Acquisitions, BCI. “The Groovie Goolies were one of the most unique casts of characters on Saturday mornings, and we’re glad to offer this series not only to those of us that remember it on television, but to a whole new generation.”

“Groovie Goolies” features a cast of legendary monsters who get themselves in all sorts of wacky predicaments, as they joke, dance and sing their way through each episode. The hyper-colorful series stars the residents of Horrible Hall; Frankie, Wolfie, Drac, Mummy, Hagatha, Bella LaGhostley, Boneapart and a wealth of other animated tributes to classic monster movie icons. In each episode, the Goolies offer an abundance of goofy gags in “Weird Window Time,” a segment reminiscent of the classic “Laugh-In” series. Each episode ends with an original Groovie Goolies rock song presented in the form of a wildly animated music video. This show inspired many famous “Goolians” including Rob Zombie, Alice Cooper, and wealth of Hollywood’s top award winning costumers, writers and make-up artists.

Special features include:

“Goolians”—brand new, 45 minute “docu-comedy” created by producer and voice over artist Wally Wingert (Family Guy, Invader Zim) and Daniel Roebuck (Lost, The Fugitive), featuring interviews with Alice Cooper, Forrest J. Ackerman, Ron Chaney, Lous Scheimer, Oscar® winning make-up artist Bill Corso, “Goolie” head writer Jack Mendelsohn, and more. Includes new original rock song “True Blue Goolian,” and a music video with the Sacramento punk band “The Groovie Ghoulies.”

Audio commentary tracks for two episodes, featuring producer Lou Scheimer, “Goolie” head writer Jack Mendelsohn, Filmation historian Darrell McNeil, and Hollywood monster expert Bob Burns. Hosted by Wally Wingert

Image gallery featuring original model sheets, animation cels, storyboards, backgrounds and PSAs

“Goolie-Get-Together Sing-a-Long”

Candid story from producer Lou Scheimer about “The Creation of Filmation”

Trivia and episode guide

DVD-ROM extras, including scripts and the original Series Bible for “The Kookie Spookies”