Six Degrees of ZombieStoogeration…

https://d2rights.blogspot.com/2012/04/three-stooges-vs-zombies-well-zombie.html

Welp, never let it be said that great minds don’t think alike (and weaken nations)! While perusing one of my favorite sites, I’d noticed an article I KNOW I’ve never read before, “The Three Stooges versus Zombies.” Now, whenever I hear the word “zombie,” I cannot help but think of the fab five from Hertsfordshire (also known as one of the more innovative British Invasion bands).

But how can I link my favorite comedy team to my favorite musical group? Let’s see,,,The Zombies were featured in a pretty damn good movie Bunny Lake Is Missing directed by one Otto Preminger. Their appearance consisted of a TV performance that was playing in a bar whilst Laurence Olivier (yeah, THAT guy) is trying to figure things out about the titular Bunny Lake and what the deal is between her mother and brother. (I may be a bit off on the details–I saw it on VIDEOTAPE! Why haven’t I come into the 21st century and Amazon Prime’d it?!)

So how can we connect The Zombies to The Three Stooges? (Besides the fact that The Zombies are still touring at the grand ages of 79-80! (I would’ve KILLED to have the Stooges last that long…I would’ve been around to see them on various talk shows, instead of begging my parents to recall what it was like to see them on the Ed Sullivan Show, the Steve Allen Show {one of those appearances was with none other than Lenny Bruce…the only way that could’ve made for a more mis-matched pairing would be if Richard Pryor dropped by.})

Okay…where was I? Who’s the best actor to use as a connection? We have Laurence Olivier, who was married to Vivien Leigh, who starred in Gone With the Wind, which also featured Academy Award winner Hattie McDaniel, who’s brother Sam McDaniel starred in Heavenly Daze (1947) as a butler that thought Shemp had risen from the dead and was haunting Moe and Larry due to the fact that they were going to scam investors with a fountain pen that writes under whipped cream (needless to say, it doesn’t work.)

Looks like I could connect Laurence Olivier to the Three Stooges at least! That makes me wonder how many ways I can connect John and David Carradine to the Stooges…I’m thinking it’s pretty damned easy!

Welp, it’s time to come up with another movie to review…

As I was perusing all the other websites trying to come up with something for the next review (i.e. “borrowing ideas from more talented people than I”), I couldn’t help but notice that I need to come up with a REASON to write. If left to my own devices, I would be the Whitman’s Sampler of Bad Movie Blogs…wait, the Russell Stover of Bad Movie Blogs…uh, the whatever’s the best of that type of cheapo chocolate candy sampler thing desperate folks give significant others for V Day.

What with all the AI goodies they have nowadays, you’d think that I could whip out something in the style of (insert best blogs here…I’ve GOT to learn how to put a blog roll somewhere in here…do they still call them that? I’ve been old since 2005–an uber serious bout of heart failure/pneumonia will do that to you. I should’ve kept my Xanga Journal Chronicles of THAT whole mishegas!)

I should’ve known something was wrong–I wanted to wait until my 30th birthday…THEN I wanted to wait until my parents celebrated their anniversary on 7 December (yep…the anniversary of Pearl Harbor as well!) So, I waited until 8 December…but there was a goddamned snow and ice storm! Being the epitome of cheap, I claimed to my mother that I was going to WALK to the goddamned bus stop (icy roads/sidewalks/and downhill almost all the way!) Why pay $15 for a cab ride when I could pay $0 by using my college/staff pass? WIN-WIN!!!!

Of course, my mother merely chalked this up to the fact that I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep since Thanksgiving; hadn’t eaten more than 800 calories per day since Satan knows when…and I was beginning to hallucinate. These weren’t those hallucinations where you think you see something in the corner of your eye…these were the type where you’d be having an extended conversation asking Larry Fine what it was like to pal around with Clint Eastwood, Edward G. Robinson, Phyllis Diller, Redd Foxx, Edy Williams (and also was Harry Cohn as big a putz as everyone said he was, and how he [Larry] felt about Moe’s son in law, Norman Maurer thinking he was the best actor and funniest comedian of all the Stooges…mind you, he was son in law to Moe and nephew in law to Shemp and Curly!)

It was around this time (with plenty of recovery time on my hands, when I started on my blogging of terrible movies. I came by this via my parents–the late 1970s and early 80s was a world where you had to watch SOMETHING after Wrestling at the Chase (we’ll forget what came on before that…Jerry Damn Falwell), boring talk shows, church crap on radio, OR, whatever terrible movies they were playing on KPLR-TV (Channel 11). But this was thirty years later, so I had South Park to help me along. Did I start my video collection of “Laughter is the Best Medicine” at this time, supplementing my aging Three Stooges videos that were peppered with commercials for The Waterbed Store (it looks like we see the end screen of a Shemp or Joe era short…and this was when it was still on those same reels from 1958), Becky (Queen of Carpet) and Wanda (Princess of Tile) along with a special surprise guest, one Mr. Steve Mizerany! Fantasy Jim Coachworks (whose commercials probably featured at least ONE someone I was familiar with); and later in the 90s, terrible, poorly acted, and out and out scams of “hot girls” you could talk to by calling “1-900-GIRL! Pick up the phone! Pick up the phone!” (This is a reasonable facsimilie thereof…)

That was a VERY convoluted way to tell you that 1: I need to find “new” terrible movies to review and 2: I need to figure out how to do a damn blogroll (or whatever they call that on WordPress.) This is also a convoluted way to tell you that sometimes I prefer watching/reading OTHER people review movies than do the “dirty work” myself. I mean, come on–that’s how I get my material for the few movies I do write about. How else would I have written about Savage Intruder (which has a degree of Stoogeration–Joe Besser as the tour bus driver).

Yes, this was a long-winded diatribe about my attempt to do a March Mayhem and Madness Blogathon where each and every obscure film will either be from the 1970s and have at least one degree of Stoogeration, or will be just a terrible junky exploitationer…with a degree of Stoogeration. I’ve got a little over two weeks to get some ideas together, so let’s hope I come up with something or other…

…and the Next Six Degrees of Stoogeration Film is…

Gather your courage, dim the lights, and bask in the glory of seeing Joe Besser in a chapter of Trash Cinema Hagsploitation!

19 June 1897-4 May 1975

March Movie Madness & Mayhem (Day 15?)–Cult of the Damned (1969) – Journeys in Classic Film

Apparently, I’ve lost ANOTHER day somewhere (Day 15 is missing, just like Bunny Lake!) So, without further ado, here’s what SHOULD’VE been featured…Angel, Angel Down We Go (aka Cult of the Damned). You’ve got Jennifer Jones, Roddy McDowall, Lou Rawls, Holly Near, and most importantly, Joe Besser in a cameo as a tour bus driver.

via Cult of the Damned (1969) – Journeys in Classic Film

On This Day in 1975…

Los_Angeles_Times__Friday__24_January_1975

Where Were You On May 4, 1975?

 

June 19, 1897 – May 4, 1975

It’s Gobblin’ Time!

It’s a Halloween Stooge-a-thon!

Get your spook on with the Stooges!

Instead of drowning my unemployment anniversary sorrows with Diet Coke (or Diet Mountain Dew), I’ve decided to laugh in the face of continued in-between-engagement-ism (that’s a perfectly cromulent word!) and get started on my annual Hallowe’en B-movie thon a day early.

The first short on the list Three Pests in a Mess (1945), isn’t technically a “scare” short, but there’s a bit where the fellows run around the Ever-Rest Pet Cemetary with a “body” (actually a dummy that Curly “shot”). It’s funny and fast paced and interestingly, is one of the final shorts Curly would film before his stroke later in 1945. It’s amazing to see how much he aged in a matter of months. Funnily enough, the “old age” of 42 seemed ancient for the Stooges, but 42 now? A mere baby! Maybe people just lived harder back then.

The rest of the list includes the usual “spook” themed shorts, as well as the last short filmed–Flying Saucer Daffy (1957).  It’s a Besser-era short, which is “Niagara Falls!” for some Stooge fans, but you have to admit, Joe Besser was a talented comic, and he could hold his own with Moe and Larry…even though he didn’t really fit. Sometimes that worked (like this short), sometimes it didn’t (the reincarnation shorts).  Then again, after 20+ years, I’m not sure what would’ve worked after the deaths of Curly and Shemp.

Anyhoo, that’s the first half of the Halloween-a-Rama, the second begins tomorrow night!