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…

Horrorwe’en Day 18: (or, Why This List Sucks and Not Just Because the Three Stooges Are On It)

Welcome to one of my laziest posts of the season…which is fitting because this is one of the laziest subjects/videos I’ve seen in a WHILE (and I’ve been watching AI-created videos that sound everything out phonetically!) How is it lazy? Let me count the ways…

1. W(hy)TF is everything in the public domain? If everything isn’t, I’m lazy, so I’m not gonna look.
2. How are the Three Stooges on this list for a movie directed by EDWARD BERNDS?!?!? Pretty sure that film should be by one David Lowell Rich (Have Rocket, Will Travel). But to be fair, none of their movies should make it to this list. I’m not saying this as an uberfan, I’m saying this as a fan of olde-tymey slapstick teams. I wouldn’t place Utopia (Laurel and Hardy) here either (The Big Noise? Nope, not even that!)
3. Give me information that I DON’T know, not something you probably got from Kenneth Anger or his non-union Mexican equivalent.
4. Does the word “worst” even count anymore? Why is it “the worst?” Bad acting, boring, what? I can’t even think about a $3 budgeted movie as “worst” when there are movies that cost 500 times that much that stink to high heaven.
5. The more time I think about the term “worst,” the more annoyed I become–maybe it’s because of the Medveds and their “Ed Wood’s the worst director EVAR!” trope–if anything, Wood could be a bit BORING. When I think “bad,” I want hilariously bad (see any of Rudy Ray Moore’s films…except Vampire Assassin).

Anyhoo–this is a lazy post for a lazy video. Enjoy!

OTD in 1993…(and the Man Who Would Be Stooge…)

As I have mentioned many times before, I recall hearing the news that Joe DeRita had died during a commercial break (while watching the Stooges, ironically enough)! I still don’t get the hate folks aim his way–I imagine I wouldn’t feel that great knowing that I was going to be renamed Curly-Joe; but I don’t think he “hated” the Stooges, he just didn’t like their style of comedy–and I can agree to disagree with him about it. Remember, this was a man who had had a career waaaay before he became a Stooge, so it was not like they got Joe Blow from Kokomo to be the Third Stooge. He had a name (in burlesque, no less), and being a “replacement” just because you were short, and fat (like the most popular stooge) would kinda suck. What did not suck, however, was the fact that Larry wanted him as a FULL partner, not just an “employee,” meaning he would get the same salary, the same benefits, the same everything. Now, whoever was the person who wanted him first (the story goes Larry saw him in Vegas and called him a “combination of Curly, Lou Costello, and the fat lady in the opera.”) However, in Moe’s autobiography, he had wanted him even after Shemp died (and wanted to buy out his contract with Minsky–look that one up, kids!) but of course, Columbia wanted whomever they still had under contract (even though they DID have DeRita under contract…once upon a time.)

Things were going like gangbusters until the late 1960s, with the kids from the 1950s growing into teens who probably wanted to go on to someone hipper… (uh, Tiny Tim?) their popularity was waning, and they decided to semi-retire, but not without their infamous swan song, Kook’s Tour. Now, when Tour was first thought of, it was 1965 and it was supposed to be a world tour by a trio of kooks. In 1970, ain’t nobody got time for gallivanting around the world and whatnot. Instead, they chose to stay closer to home…and go fishing… (insert some fans’ yawning sfx here).

What I’m NOT going to do is go into all the reasons why Kook’s Tour is supposedly the worst (or best) thing since sliced bread, but I will tell you that if another film they were set to do had been their actual swan song, I don’t even know how to describe all the feelings I’d have about it. Let me put it this way: if you are a fan of “so bad it’s good” films, then you know who Al Adamson and Sam Sherman are. As the story goes, Sherman and Adamson wanted to make a western spoof with olde-timey comedians they were fans of…and of course, the first team that came to mind was the Three Stooges. But there was a problem…by late 1974, there were only two Stooges, Moe and Curly-Joe. By the time rehearsals began in March, Larry had already been dead for over a month. So, what to do for the necessary Second Stooge?

Have no fear, Emil Sitka is here! He had been in Stooge films since the Curly era, was one of only two actors that had performed with ALL the different sets of Stooges (the other was “Tiny” Brauer), so there would be no need for lengthy rehearsals. As Sitka himself remembers it, “If Moe were here right now, he’d say we could create a scene right now” (paraphrased).

Proof that the fellows COULD make a scene out of pretty much anything!

Unfortunately, The Jet Set (later called Blazing Stewardesses) was not to be. As the rehearsals progressed, Moe became weaker and weaker due to lung (or stomach) cancer and passed away on 4 May 1975. Apparently, Adamson and Sherman didn’t want the Two Stooges, so guess what they came up with?

The damn TWO Ritz Brothers! What was the difference between having two of one trio or two of another? Hell, if that’s the case, they could’ve dragged out Groucho and Zeppo if we want to have former trios that are now duos.

Okay, granted, there weren’t that many olde-timey comedy teams still around that could work with little rehearsal, hit their marks, and not cause the film to go over budget. So, if you want to see what could’ve been the Stooges’ last film, you can watch it over on the YouTubes,

19 June 1897-4 May 1975

OTD in 1955…

The comedy world lost one of the funniest men to ever grace the screen. He didn’t have to say a single word…once he walked into the shot, you felt like laughing, even if he didn’t do anything.

He was also one of the first “sploitation” actors–if you’ve heard the term “Fake Shemp,” this is what they mean. There were four films created with the Fake Shemp (Joe Palma), and since Jules White could direct and produce a film in a matter of HOURS with footage of Shemp from an old short, throw in some new footage of Moe and Larry, and voila! You’ve got a new film to fool theatre managers made for the fraction of the price of a new one! It’s win-win…until Moe and Larry (and even Harry Cohn) realized they couldn’t run the Shempsploitation Express forever…so along came EVERYONE’S favorite Stooge replacement, Joe Besser!

(I actually liked Besser–he was such a totally different comedian that you just went “WHAT?!” when you saw him with the rough and tumble Moe and Larry. No, I’m not giving up my Stooge card–I’ve had it since 1975!)

Joe DeRita: 12 July 1909-3 July 1993

March Movie Madness & Mayhem, Day 24: Hagsploitation!

Hagsploitation: a term that I possibly just thought up or I stole it from someone else (but can’t remember who it was). Either way, it’s a term that usually brings to mind actresses “of a certain age,” like Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Shelley Winters or even Debbie Reynolds (when she and Winters starred in What’s the Matter With Helen, she was all of 38 years old!)

However, hagsploitation wasn’t just for women—any time you saw an old vaudevillian like George Jessel in Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood, it was hagsploitation. Sure, it was said to be a cameo, but come on, we know what it was, and it was hagsploitation, pure and simple.

Now this may sound like I’m knocking older actors for appearing in films long past their “prime.” Come on—I’m a Stooge fan that wanted to see Howard, Sitka and DeRita in Blazing Stewardesses—I can hardly be called anti-hag! Interestingly, it was director Al Adamson’s leitmotif—giving older actors a chance to get in front of new audiences. Whether or not the vehicles used for that chance were any good or not…well, work is work!

Enjoy these sites and their reviews of hagsploitation films!

What’s the Matter With Helen? (1971) from Dreams Are What Le Cinema Is For… it’s got repressed lesbianism, murderous sons, and religious fundamentalism.

Blazing Stewardesses (1975) from DVD Drive-In…

Last but not least, Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976), from The Aisle Seat…

On This Day in 1975…

Los_Angeles_Times__Friday__24_January_1975

DREAMS ARE WHAT LE CINEMA IS FOR…: MOMMIE DEAREST 1981

Source: DREAMS ARE WHAT LE CINEMA IS FOR…: MOMMIE DEAREST 1981

I know, I know…yet another day without the Flesh Feast review. But I have a good excuse! I’ve been bingeing on this new blog I found, and I think I’ve found another (yes, ANOTHER!) influence on how/where/what I want Six Degrees of Stoogeration to be. Ironically, the subject is Joan Crawford, who the Stooges (then known as Ted Healy and His Stooges) shared the screen with in Dancing Lady (1933). The subject is the camp classic Mommie Dearest (1981), which I vaguely remember being in the theatres. At least I remember all the jokes comedians made.

Years later, I saw the film on TV and I didn’t get what the deal was. I knew OF Joan Crawford, and what I knew, didn’t seem that much different than what was on the screen. Faye Dunaway’s performance didn’t seem to warrant the brickbats the Razzie folks were raining upon her. I mean, look at the damn woman in any film past 1950. You can’t NOT imagine that that’s a drag queen. Go ahead, I dare you! I’ve seen Dancing Lady multiple times, and I cannot reconcile the Joan Crawford I see there with the Joan Crawford of 1967’s Berserk! It’s not just age–in fact, age doesn’t even enter into it. Bette Davis aged in Stooge Years ™, yet didn’t quite seem to be the garish whirlwind of WTF?! that Crawford was. Everything seemed so EXAGGERATED. The eyebrows. The hair, oh sweet Jesus THE HAIR! If Elizabeth Taylor could keep her hair dark most of her life, why in the world did Joan, er, Miss Crawford, scald our eyeballs with such monstrosities as that “Old Lady Red” deal she had in Trog (1970)? WHO THOUGHT THAT THAT WAS A GOOD IDEA?!

Now, what was I talking about? Oh, Mommie Dearest and the fact that it seems more true than not…at least with Miss Crawford’s larger than life personality. Maybe it’s just me, but there was a lot in the film that rang true. Joan did seem like she would say “Don’t f*** with me fellas!”

Let me get back to the subject of this blog–it’s more than your snarky run down of Z movies…it’s that, but it’s more–it’s a personal insight on what makes movies tick for him, it’s essays that “spoil” the movie (which I love), and the comments! Oh, the comments! Such comments I’ve not seen since the olden days of the internet/sitting around with my piano teacher! Knowledgeable folks who’ve often rubbed shoulders with the subject/stars of the film, it’s hard not to get lost in reading the comments and fall down the YouTube/Google hole of finding out more.

I’ve rambled long enough (when I could’ve been writing about Veronica Lake and FloridaNazispoitation!)

Ken Anderson’s http://lecinemadreams.blogspot.com! You won’t regret it!