Creation Convention Part II: Geeks on Parade

Back in August 2010 I wrote about a science-fiction/comic book convention that I attended with a few friends of mine twenty-five years earlier. Some new information from that trip has recently been unearthed, and at the risk of exposing the true geeky nature of my past, I'd like to present this new information here. The original blog was titled Creation Convention--25 Years Later, and should probably be read before delving into this sequel, if you haven't already done so.

When we last left our daring conventioneers, they had experienced a sci-fi/comic book nirvana of sorts. It's true that the Special Guests featured at the convention may not have been all that "special" in reality, but to a novice convention attender like myself they were just fine. Exactly who were these guests? Well they had one each from the worlds of "Star Trek", "Doctor Who" and comic books. When you hear that a special guest from "Star Trek" will be attending the first thing that pops into your head is a name like William Shatner or Leonard Nimoy. Then you think that maybe those A-listers might be too much to ask and you downgrade your expectations to someone like Walter Koenig or Nichelle Nichols--still people you'd love to meet. The Special "Star Trek" guest at this particular convention was none other than... Judson Scott! Judson Scott? Yes, Khan's right-hand-man from "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan". Not exactly a household name, but at least he had some other early 80s sci-fi credentials. He also appeared in the series "V" and was the star of the short-lived TV show "The Phoenix".

The "Doctor Who" guest was even less "special" to me. I was (and still am) only familiar with the Tom Baker ere of the show. While I wouldn't expect Tom Baker to make an appearance at the convention, I would have been happy to meet one of his sidekicks (or I suppose I should say companions)--like Sarah Jane Smith, Harry Sullivan, Leela or Romana (especially Leela or Romana!). Turns out they did have a companion--but it was Mark Strickson, who played Turlough, the companion of the Doctor after Tom Baker. This was probably a good guest to have on the list, as he was the companion of the then-current Doctor (played by Peter Davison). Unfortunately, I had not seen any of the Peter Davison episodes of the show and therefore had no idea who Mark Strickson was.

The special guests from the comic book world were Wendy and Richard Pini--the husband and wife team responsible for the comic book series Elfquest. I wasn't really into Elfquest (or comic books in general), but it was the favorite title of one of my friends at the time, so meeting them really made his day.

All of this information was already reported in the original blog. So what's new? Well, a couple months after writing the first blog I managed to find an old photo album that had some pictures from our trip to the Creation Convention. Then, just last week, I found an old folder that contained some random things...including my autographs from the convention! I'd like to present some of these items here to conclude the story of the August 1985 Creation Convention in Boston.

Here we are at the convention. Note how they went all out in promoting the show: a nice 11x17 sign propped up on an easel. Very impressive. Oh well... Also, note that we already have all our "stuff" from the convention. This photo was obviously taken as we were leaving, but it makes a good intro if you ignore all the swag we're carrying. I'm the one in the green jacket by the way.

Here we are again, looking very awkward but happy to be immersed in all the geekiness the convention had to offer.

This is a photo taken during the convention's "famous" no-minimum-bid auction. This was right after I had the high bid on the Star Trek communicator. I was a bit frightened to think I had just handed over FIFTY-FIVE bucks, but was also VERY happy to be the proud owner of a communicator!

And here's that very same communicator, more than a quarter-of-a-century later--still in my possession. Nowadays you can get high-quality toy replicas of communicators, phasers and tricorders that actually have working lights and sound effects. Mine was a non-functioning replica, but was pretty much all you could get back then.

And, here's our illustrious guest star Judson Scott surveying the scene and preparing to make his grand entrance onto the stage!

Meeting Judson Scott for autographs and awe-inspiring awesomeness (or something like that).

All these years later...here's my very own Judson Scott Autographed photo. Note that I had him write "Long live the Concept" too (the "band" my friends and I were in at the time). What a geek!

Here's my autographed postcard (sorry, but I wasn't about to shell out the cash for an 8x10 for someone I didn't even know) of Mark Strickson. This photo also solves a long-time mystery. A friend who couldn't make it to the convention was a big fan of Doctor Who, so we got him a Mark Strickson autograph too. The funny thing was that we could never figure out what he had written on the photo. It looked like it said "To Kurt, Love: Mark Strickson". To this very day my friends and I STILL use "Love: Mark Strickson" when signing off on a letter or e-mail. Now I can look at my photo and see that he actually wrote the more appropriate, and less creepy, "Yours: Mark Strickson". Of course, my friend doesn't have his photo anymore, so I suppose it's still possible that it was indeed "Love" and not "Yours" on his photo, but that doesn't seem too likely...

Here's my copy of Elfquest #1 autographed by authors/artists/creators Wendy and Richard Pini. Unfortunately this was back in the day when Sharpies weren't ubiquitous at shows like this and they signed it with a regular pen. I'll bet it would have looked a lot more impressive to have their autos scrawled on the cover in sharpie rather than on the first page inside in ball-point pen, but what are you gonna do?

Finally, I have to make a correction. In the original blog about this convention I mentioned that I thought it was the very first convention I had attended. I wasn't really sure of this fact, but it seemed likely enough. I now have photographic proof that I was wrong though. A funny thing about this convention is that I remember that we were particularly struck by a young lady named Holly (we never got her last name). She was a fan and fellow convention-goer dressed as a character from the miniseries and subsequent TV series "V". Even with all the "special guest stars" present at the event, Holly really was a highlight for us. I think it's at least partially because she was an attractive female dressed up as a character from one of our favorite sci-fi shows. Did I mention we were geeks?

Anyway, I remember that we actually ran into Holly at more than one convention. It was a great thrill to see her a second time (in a better costume and accompanied by a like-dressed male companion--bummer). Well, when I found the photos from this convention, there was also one from the other time we met Holly. It's obvious from the photos that the other meeting was at an earlier convention (based on many factors, including my appearance and Holly's less-elaborate costume). I guess now I have to figure out exactly when that first convention was. The mysteries continue...

Here's the photo of Holly and her fellow alien visitor from the August 1985 convention.

And, here's the photo of us with Holly from the first time we met her at an earlier convention (almost certainly my VERY first convention). Note my "Star Trek II" phaser squirt gun and my attempt to imitate the character Donovan from "V". Poor Holly! What she must have been thinking.  I may have mentioned this already, but yes, I was a geek.

Well, I guess this finally concludes this extended trip back in time to the Boston Creation Convention of August 1985. Hope it was worth the 25+ year wait!

Movies My Sister Made Me Watch

In thinking about what kinds of things inspired me as a kid and what exactly made me the Monster Dad that I am today, a couple things seem like obvious influences. First was the fact that Boston-area TV stations (pre-cable days) showed TONS of great (and not-so-great) horror/sci-fi/monster movies--especially noteworthy was the WLVI Channel 56 Saturday afternoon show Creature Double Feature. The other impetus was my interest in paranormal/crypto mysteries: Bigfoot, The Loch Ness Monster, UFOs, ghosts, ancient astronauts, ESP, spontaneous human combustion...

Another thing which has to be considered when looking at what made me what I am today is the fact that my sister Dyan (and yes, I did ask her permission before calling her by name in this blog) took me to a number of movies when I was a kid that ranged from somewhat iffy to downright inappropriate. Before you get the wrong idea, I'm not complaining in any way. In fact, I'm eternally grateful to Dyan for exposing me to some great (and ultimately very influential on me) movies that I never would have seen as a kid, or at least would have only seen the watered down TV versions later on.

And, don't get me wrong, she didn't only take me to see scary movies that I was really too young to be going to (actually there were probably only a couple of those). Many different kinds of movies were seen in those days. The scary ones stand out, but most of the ones covered here were important ones to me in one way or another, and I probably wouldn't have seen them for many years (if ever) if it weren't for my sister.

I remember going to see a lot of movies at the now-defunct Worcester (MA) Galleria cinema. It was a three-screen theater run by General Cinemas. When you went to the theater from the mall you used to pass by a big mural of the surface of the moon on the corridor wall. It was a great way to prepare for an imagination-firing movie experience. My nephew (Dyan's son, a few years younger than me) would also accompany us on most of these trips. To illustrate how young we actually were at the time, General Cinemas had a catchy tune that would play as the company's logo went up onscreen before the movie would start. My nephew and I would get up in the front of the theater and dance around to the little tune like a couple of...well...little kids.

Here's an example of General Cinema's intro:

Pretty catchy tune, huh?

So, what were the movies that I was subjected to? At The Galleria I remember seeing "Das Boot" when it was first released in America--in German, with subtitles and everything. That was an experience. That movie was a bit "grown-up" to me at the time, but not terribly inappropriate. The 1978 remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" was another story. Now, that's a movie that freaked me out. It's a great combination of horror and science-fiction that I still think is a great movie to this day--but I'm not sure I was quite ready for it as a nine-year-old. Another fright-fest was "Creepshow". Some of the individual stories were scarier and more intense than others, but the one about the monster under the stairs was the standout one for me. It was one of those moments where I was convinced that something was going to grab me from under my chair. "Creepshow" came out in 1982, which means I would have been 13 at the time--not a tyke by any means, but I still remember it as being a very edge-of-my-seat experience. The fact that the monster reminded me a bit of Bigfoot (which I was very much into at the time...and still am for that matter) probably didn't help. I was lucky enough to meet Tom Savini--the special effects and make-up man responsible for making "Fluffy" (as the monster is affectionately nicknamed)--at a horror convention in Worcester in 2008. It was great to be able to tell him how much his creation scared the crap out of me all those years ago.

Another moment when I was convinced something was going to grab at me from under the movie seat was when we went to see "Young Frankenstein". Though the movie came out in 1974, when I would have been five, I'm pretty sure it was re-released a few years later. I'm not sure exactly how old I was when we went to see it, but can say that I really only remember the beginning. As much as this movie is decidedly a comedy, and has become one of my all-time favorites, when seeing it for the first time I didn't really get the comedy part of it. I thought it was a straight-out horror movie. The black-and-white photography and the accurate re-creation of the look and feel of a 1930s monster movie probably had a lot to do with that. I don't remember much from that screening (or how long it actually took me to realize that it was supposed to be funny), but I do recall that in the first few minutes I was indeed pretty scared and had that uncomfortable sensation that something was under my seat and about to grab me in the darkened theater.

I also saw a couple documentary-type movies with my sister which need to be mentioned in this conversation. She took me to see "In Search of Noah's Ark" (1976), which was right up my paranormal alley. as mentioned above, I had a keen interest in odd, unsolved mysteries like this. One of my favorite shows on TV was the Leonard Nimoy-hosted "In Search of...". "In Search of Noah's Ark" wasn't scary in any way, but I found it incredibly fascinating as a kid. I remember that when we left the cinema I looked up in the sky and saw a cloud formation that looked like a gigantic cross. It was probably just a couple of crossed contrails or something, but I was convinced that it was a sign from above that Noah's Ark was really sitting up on Mount Ararat, waiting to be found. I guess it didn't occur to me that we saw only one of many screenings of the movie in one of many cinemas that were showing it. If it had been a true sign, then I would assume that the same sky-based cross would have been made visible over every theater showing the movie every couple of hours as the movie ended and the audiences watching it went to the parking lots all across the country (and what about screenings that got out after dark?). But I digress...

Another "documentary" (which was actually a docu-drama of sorts, but was a documentary as far as my youthful mind was concerned) that we saw was "Sasquatch: The Legend of Bigfoot" (1977). This would probably have to be considered the ultimate going-to-the-movies-with-my-sister movie. Not only was the movie supposed to be scary, the fact that I believed in Bigfoot and was very scared of the creature made it all the more terrifying to me. A few years ago I was finally able to watch the movie again on DVD (though I did see it once on TV a couple years after seeing it in the theater). It is pretty obvious now that the movie is a movie (and not a documentary), but as a kid I really did think that what I was watching was real. I remember that we saw this movie at the Interstate 495 cinema in Milford, MA. The reason I feel confident about this memory nearly thirty-five years later is that when we left the theater after the movie my sister had my nephew and myself climb up on a giant snow pile in the parking lot (of K-Mart, which shared the lot with the theater) and throw snow on her windshield--similar to how a number of Bigfoot (Bigfeet?) threw boulders from a cliff onto the cabin of some loggers in the movie--because she didn't have any windshield washer fluid and wanted to clean her windshield before we left.

Not every movie my sister took me to was at a traditional movie theater. I remember her bringing my nephew and myself to see Woody Allen's "Sleeper" (1973) at the Worcester Public Library (most likely sometime in the late-1970s). It was always cool to see an interesting movie in a non-traditional setting. True, like "Young Frankenstein" was more of a comedy than a horror movie, "Sleeper" is more of a comedy than a Science-Fiction movie, but as a kid watching it in a library it was very much straight-up sci-fi to me.

The best non-movie theater movie my sister brought me to was "Forbidden Planet" (1956) at the Worcester Art Museum. It was a great introduction to one of the best early science-fiction movies, and the art museum setting was a great place to see it for the first time.

Finally, here's an example of a movie that we didn't go out to see. While this one was watched on TV it still ranks as one of the scariest movie experiences of my youth--and my sister was once again very much involved. The movie "The Curse of Bigfoot" (1978) was being shown on late-night TV sometime in the early 1980s. I was sleeping over at my nephew's house and my sister (knowing of my interest in Bigfoot) wouldn't let us stay up late enough to watch it (it didn't come on until around 2:00AM) but agreed to set the alarm and wake us up in time to see it. Her house was out in the middle of the woods (literally surrounded by the woods and about a quarter-of-a-mile from the road on a gravel driveway). Not only that but the living room, where the TV was located, had a wall of windows that faced the woods. The movie is a terrible example of filmmaking, but the combination of my age, the fact that it was a Bigfoot movie, the very late hour and the fact that the entire wall facing the woods was made up of windows (that Bigfoot would have had no problem looking in at us through if he happened to come loping up to the house) made for one of the creepiest experiences of my whole life.

What would I be now if it weren't for these movie experiences I had as a kid? I might be a bit more "normal". I'm pretty sure I'd be a bit more boring. And I definitely don't think I'd be Monster Dad today. All I can say is Thank You Dyan for scaring me (and maybe "scarring" me a bit too in the process) all those years ago. I wouldn't change those priceless, terrifying memories for anything!

The Hanover Theatre vs. Showcase Cinema Downtown

I'm about to plagarize myself here. I've been writing a number of blogs, but haven't been able to finish any of them. However, I wrote a blog entry on my MySpace page nearly two years ago that I'm now going to pass off as a "new" blog here. If you read this one on MySpace, I apologize. However, if you weren't a friend of mine on MySpace then I feel this is a story worth repeating. A couple of weeks ago I was telling the story to a friend and decided that it would be a blog worth re-blogging. Hope you agree.

By the way, this is a story about a building in downtown Worcester, Massachusetts which started its life as a performance venue, was turned into a movie cinema and is now once again a live performance venue. The story mainly focuses on the period between its movie theater period and its return to glory years after closing down. And, this story was written in April of 2009. Anyway, here it is...

The Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts opened to much fanfare in downtown Worcester in the spring of 2008. It had a very successful first year of operations, bringing many quality shows and thousands of people to watch them in what had previously been a deteriorating, long-closed theater. The building originally opened in the early 1900s. It was renovated and expanded into the Loew's Poli Palace (one of those great old "movie palaces") in the 1920s. In 1967 National Amusements bought the place, remodeled it into a multi-screen movie theater and re-named it Showcase Cinema. They opened the much bigger Worcester Showcase North theater in the 1990s and eventually closed the downtown location in 1998. It remained empty until the grand plans for its current life as the Hanover Theatre were revealed a couple years ago. At the time, it seemed a bit like it might end up being yet another pipe dream for bringing life back to downtown Worcester. National Amusements had been unwilling to sell the building to anyone who wanted to use it as a movie theater--which would thus provide them with competition. After building the Showcase North cinemas National Amusements began methodically closing all the other movie theaters they owned in Worcester (which was pretty much ALL of the theaters in Worcester) to force anyone wanting to see a first-run movie in the city to go to their new (less-than-convenient) location in a mostly industrial area on the northern edge of the city. The Hanover Theatre would be a live performance venue though, which was enough to convince National Amusements to finally sell. Through a big fundraising project, and much help from the Hanover Insurance company (hence the name), they somehow managed to raise the 31 million dollars or so needed for the renovation. A big part of this renovation was re-converting the space from a multi-screen cinema back into the single stage performance area that it originally was meant to be. After about ten years of lying closed and empty (the last three or four of that time being renovated) the Hanover Theatre finally brought the old building back to life.

I only knew the building as the National Amusements cinema for most of my life, and probably wouldn't believe it had been built in 1904 if someone had told me. The remodeling had a distinctly late-60s look to it and I pretty much assumed that was when the building had been built. They somehow managed to carve the huge performance hall into four or five seperate movie theaters. Most of them had the feel of any 1970s/80s movie theater...except for the big one upstairs. This was one impressive space. It was larger than the others, and the screen was in the area that was originally the stage. Most impressive (and out-of-place) was the giant, ornate chandelier that hung from the ceiling. To be honest, it was pretty ingenious how they managed to take the original space and turn it into two big movie cinemas one on top of the other (on two floors obviously). The other screens were in much smaller spaces that were somehow shoe-horned into the leftover areas of the old building. I imagine that this was probably a very common way to reuse the old movie palaces once TV and cable started to take the place of the big night out at the movies. Revenue could be increased by having four (or more) screens showing four (or more) movies at the same time, rather than one marquee title that had to pull in all the money. I suppose that this was sort of the birth of the age of megaplexes that we're living in now. 12, 14, 16 and even more screens are now regularly put into most of the cinemas that are built today.

Whatever the reasons for the changes, and however good or bad they were, the multi-screen Showcase Cinema was what I knew the building as for most of my life. I saw many movies there including "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home", "Cape Fear", "Tremors", "Maximum Overdrive" and, yes, "Who's That Girl".
So, why am I writing all this information about the history of the Hanover Theatre that could be found pretty easily by searching the internet or the theater's own website (see above)? Well I wanted to share a personal account of just how different a visit to the theater is today to what it was like ten years ago. I wasn't able to take in an actual show during the theater's first season until last November when my wife and I saw "Movin' Out" there. It was a great show, and it was difficult to think that this was the same building that I had seen so many movies in all those years ago. The only other time I had been in the renovated space was when they had an open house just a few days before the first shows started. It was a chance to look around and see not only all the work that went into transforming this place into something that looked like it had been transported right out of the early 1900s, but also to try to compare it to what I remebered and try to visualize just how extensive the changes were. There were staircases that were still in the same place. You had the feeling of the big upstairs cinema when you sat in the seats upstairs (the balcony)--only now there was a complete first floor of seats below you, in what had previously been a separate theater, looking at the same stage rather than their own screen downstairs. All-in-all I'd have to say that it seemed like 31 million dollars well spent on bringing a classic old space back to life rather than knocking it down to make some sterile new place that had no history.

Okay, so here's the personal story to illustrate how different these these differences were. That February 2008 visit to the Hanover Theatre's open house made me realize that it had been about ten years since I had last visited the old place. In a few days, men in tuxedos and women in lavish gowns would sip champagne and celebrate the grand opening of the Hanover in style. But the closing of the Showcase Cinemas ten years earlier had looked much different. By the late 1990s National Amusements had turned the cinema into a "Bargain" theater, where they'd show second-run fare. The new movies would open at the main Showcase North location and then eventually be sent to the downtown location to die. The prices were right (kind of like an all-day matinee), but the movies were a bit out-of-date and the clientele they drew in was nothing like what would be showing up on opening night for the Hanover Theatre.
The last time I had visited was in early 1998 to see Al Pacino and Keanu Reeves in "The Devil's Advocate". I hadn't been to the theater in a while and didn't realize how far it had fallen from grace. It didn't look like any money was put into keeping it clean or maintained. The theaters were dingy and the whole place had a semi-deserted, creepy feel about it. Apparently it wasn't so much a place that people went to to see movies any more as it was a place for certain elements of society to hang out. Why do I say this? Well, my biggest memory from that night wasn't "The Devil's Advocate" itself (a movie that I do like), but instead was something I heard behind me as the movie spooled out. The film was being shown in one of the small, narrow, hallway-like theaters on the first floor (to the right of the bigger-screen theater in the center of the space). There were only two or three other people at the 9:00 (or so) show I went to--and none of them seemed too interested in what was happening on the screen. About halfway through I heard a quiet crash from a few rows behind me. It sounded like glass--but not like a bottle or something like that. It was the sound of very thin, brittle glass breaking. This was followed by the quiet but anguished cry of "Oh man, that's fucked up... That's fucked up!". Apparently a patron was enjoying his crack pipe rather than the usual movie fare of popcorn, soda and Milk Duds. This dropping of the pipe was apparently a devastating blow to this individual, as well as a sign to me that I probably wouldn't be visiting the Showcase Cinemas anymore (at least not alone, and not for a late-night movie during the week). That became a moot point when the place closed down a few weeks later.
Almost exactly ten years later the hoi-polloi of Worcester (if there is any such thing) was arriving at the opening of the Hanover Theatre for the Performing Arts in their finest to celebrate and see Bernadette Peters open the grand space once more. From crack pipes to champagne...what a difference a decade can make!

The Future is Passe

A Facebook friend recently made me aware, through his status update, of a milestone about to pass unfulfilled. With only one day left in the year 2010 it would appear that we are NOT going to "make contact" as promised in the movie "2010: The Year We Make Contact" (1984). This realization made me think of other science-fiction movies that failed to predict the future before their settings became part of the past instead of the future.

Science-fiction tends to be speculative, and that's a good thing. It doesn't really try to "predict" the future, per se--just use the genre to tell a story that may or may not seem feasible in the real world. The "fiction" part of science-fiction allows for most any setting and plot lines the author/film-makers can imagine. The time frame can be any period in the past, present or future. The "science" aspect of science fiction frequently (but not always) tends to cause the setting to be in the future. Time travel stories/movies are a notable example. Usually the time machine apparatus is invented in the future ("The Terminator" (1984)), or the present ("Back to the Future" (1985)), and the protagonists of the story can then travel to any point in the past or future ("Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (1989)...).

Now, when a science-fiction story is set in the future, the author/film-makers can choose between a couple of different ways to express when the action is taking place. The first method is to simply describe it as "the future", "the near future", or the futuristic setting can simply be implied by the story itself without needing to state it outright. What makes this method effective is that no matter when the story is read (or the movie watched), it will always be taking place in "the future". The other method is to explicitly state the time that the story is taking place in. This gives a sense of just how far into the future the story is unfolding and gives a sense of relativity to the reader's/viewer's own refernce point in time. This is perfectly fine with a newly published book or a recently released movie, but poses a problem when reading older books or watching older movies. What was "the future" in the story might actually be "the past" by the time someone reads/watches it. With the possible exception of Nostradamus and other future predictors, no one really knows what the future is going to bring. This is what makes science-fiction such an interesting and wide-open genre. One can speculate any kind of future that one can imagine and make an interesting story out of it. Of course, when the time of that story actually comes to pass, the "predictions" made in a future-based story will almost always not reflect the present world's reality.

There are many examples of this paradox, and more are happening all the time. I haven't done any exhaustive research on this topic, but here are a few examples that come to mind from my own movie-watching experience. "2010: The Year We Make Contact" is a very topical example, because 2010 is about to expire with no contact (that I'm aware of) with a higher intelligence from "out there". Jupiter has not collapsed in on itself, and it's going to have to do it pretty quickly if it wants to beat Dick Clark ringing in 2011. Of course "2010" was the sequel to the better known "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968). Both of these movies were based on Arthur C. Clarke books. As of tomorrow, the dates of both movies will be in the past. Clarke DID write two more books in his series, "2061: Odyssey Three" and "3001: The Final Odyssey". There's still quite a while before the book set in 2061 becomes dated, and 3001 is definitely going to be safe for some time.

Big Brother was watching us in the George Orwell novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four" and a couple movies based on that novel. 1984 probably seemed pretty far in the future when Orwell wrote the book in 1949, but obviously it is now pretty far in the past. My interest in science-fiction really solidified in the early 1980s so I remember hearing about the movie version that was released in 1984. I have never read the book or seen the movies (though I probably should), but am somewhat familiar with the whole "Big Brother is watching" theme. While 1984 came and went without Orwell's dystopian predictions coming true, the idea of "Big Brother" really has become part of our collective conscience. Whenever there's fear of loss of personal freedom or privacy because of corrupt government, identity theft, internet security issues, and the like we tend to hear something about "Big Brother".

The "Terminator" franchise is based on time travel, so some of its problems with time catching up with it can be explained away, but when you get right down to it, Skynet was supposed to become self-aware in August of 1997. It wasn't long after this date that the computers declare war on humanity. This date can be adjusted as the series continues by saying that the heroics of the good guys in the movies (TV show, comics...) caused a delay in when Skynet finally went online. Now that's science-fiction at work! The original time traveling in "The Terminator" occurred when characters were sent back to 1984 from the year 2029, so there's still a little while before that becomes dated.

Another 1980s-based time travel series of movies is coming close to a time of reckoning itself. "Back to the Future" (1985) is pretty safe. In that movie, Doc Brown invents a time machine in the present (1985) and Marty McFly travels 30 years in the past to 1955. No problems there. But in the first sequel to the movie, "Back to the Future Part II" (1989), Marty and Doc Brown travel into the future. How far in the future? All the way to the year 2015. As of tomorrow, 2015 will only be four years off.

TV shows aren't exempt from these time problems either. I first started watching the original "Twilight Zone" (1959-64) back in the early 1980s, when the show was already 20 to 25 years old. I remember at least a couple episodes that took place in the 1980s. It was interesting to hear that (seeing as how I was actually living in the 1980s), but it obviously broke the mood of a story that was supposed to be taking place in the not-too-distant future instead of the present.

"Space: 1999" came out in the mid-1970s, so the year 1999 was pretty far away at the time. Of course, the show (as well as Prince's song "1999") is now more than a decade out of date. It is now almost twelve years after the show was set, and (last I knew) the Moon is still very much in orbit around the Earth. The whole millennium era (1999, 2000, 2001) has always been a tantalizing setting for science-fiction stories. The simple change of century and the simple amazing-ness of imagining a year called "Two Thousand" instead of "Nineteen-Whatever" just seem made for sci-fi. Well, at least it SEEMED like an appropriate setting for stories filmed or written many years before the actual year 2000. Strangely enough, the real world had a very sci-fi-esque potential problem as we actually approached the millennium--the Y2K Bug. That turned out to be nothing much, but had the potential of being a very effective science-fiction story come to life. A world that had allowed itself to become so dependent on computers and technology (cell phones, satellites, the internet...) suddenly finds itself plunged into a new Dark Age when all that technology suddenly and completely stops working.

The TV show "Lost in Space" premiered in 1965. The story was set in the year 1997. I'm sure 1997 seemed quite distant in 1965, but of course now it's even more dated than "Space: 1999". When they made a movie out of the show in 1998, they adjusted the setting to 2058. That ought to keep reality from catching up to the movie...for a while at least.

I suppose the next date to be concerned with is 2012. Not only does the ancient Mayan calendar predict that the world will end in 2012, Hollywood recently gave us a movie about the world ending in that year called..."2012" (2009). I haven't watched that Ronald Emmerich-directed, John Cusack-starring special effects bonanza, but probably should before 2012--just in case the world ends and I don't get a chance to watch it later. While I understand why the film-makers chose to name this movie after the year 2012, they could have easily avoided the problem of having an outdated premise in a couple years by using a title more like 2004's "The Day After Tomorrow". While I didn't find that one to be a very good movie, it does have an almost perfect, foolproof science-fiction name. The day after tomorrow indicates something in the VERY near future, yet it's a date which will never actually arrive in reality. The day after tomorrow will ALWAYS be in the future!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

The Horror That Is "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer"

As a kid, I always loved watching the animated Holiday specials around Christmas (as well as other holidays throughout the year). These shows were truly special, in that, they were only aired on television once a year and they would pre-empt regular programming. If you weren't able to be in front of your TV at the right time you'd not only miss the show, but you'd have to wait for a whole year for another opportunity. Nowadays they seem to run many of these shows more than one time during the Holiday season. And, once they became available on VHS, and later on DVD, the "special" aspect of the programs was really lost. They're still great shows of course, just not the events they used to be.

While there were many great Christmas shows, it's pretty easy to pick my two favorites: "A Charlie Brown Christmas" (1965) and "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer" (1964). It's impossible to place them in order of first place and second place. I suppose they're both tied for first in my opinion. One thing that set "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer" apart from all the other specials was the fact that it was the only one that not only entertained me and put a bunch of catchy Christmas tunes in my head, but also scared the crap out of me! Yes, I admit that I was afraid of this show as a kid. Well, not the entire show itself, but one specific character...The Abominable Snow Monster of the North.

I was fascinated by all kinds of "unsolved mysteries" as a kid (and still am today for that matter). UFOs, ghosts, The Loch Ness Monster, the statues of Easter Island, spontaneous human combustion and the possibility of "ancient astronauts" guiding the Incas and Aztecs were among the things that interested me. Basically anything that might have been covered in the Alan Landsberg produced, Leonard Nimoy hosted show "In Search of..." was fair game. However, one mystery rose above all others for me. That was the mystery of Big Hairy Monsters (BHMs), such as Bigfoot, Sasquatch and The Abominable Snowman (Yeti). The idea that such creatures had been reported for centuries and could actually exist in our world (where monsters supposedly DON'T exist) was at once fascinating and terrifying to me.

The Abominable Snowman had been a mythical creature for hundreds of years in the Himalayas, but really entered the psyche of the western world in the 1950s when people began trying to scale Mount Everest. In 1951 Eric Shipton photographed giant footprints in the snow made by the Yeti. Then, in 1953, Sir Edmund Hillary also reported seeing similar footprints. The Abominable Snowman became enough of a part of popular culture that a slew of movies about it were released in the mid- to late-1950s. "The Snow Creature" (1954), "Man beast" (1956), "The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas" (1957) and "Half Human" (1958) (an American re-working of the 1955 Japanese movie "Beast Man Snow Man", directed by Ishiro Honda of "Godzilla" fame) are some examples of how pervasive the idea of The Abominable Snowman was at the time. Apparently there was still enough interest in the creature in 1964 to cause the makers of "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer" to add The Abominable Snow Monster of the North into the cast of the show.

I love the story of "Rudolph". While some of the messages of how you should be true to yourself and how people shouldn't deem others "misfits" just because they're a little different may have gone over my head when I was young, I still enjoyed the whole story. The only problem was that the Snow Monster would periodically show up to terrify me. My main defense against this horror was to pull the blanket I was wrapped up in over my eyes and watching the scary scenes through the little spaces in the material. Exactly how I thought this would save me I'm not sure. Maybe I just figured that the monster wouldn't be able to see me. While this might seem like a bit of an extreme reaction to an animated holiday special I have read and heard about others who were similarly petrified by the experience. In fact, one of my best friends confided in me that he had also employed the blanket defense against the fearsome creature.

For the most part "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer" unfolds as a typical animated Holiday special. It, of course, tells the familiar tale of Rudolph that is well-known from the song. The story is fleshed out by the additions of Hermey, the elf who wants to be a dentist instead of a toymaker, the Island of Misfit Toys, and the gold and silver seeking prospector Yukon Cornelius. Not too far into the story we get our first, unexpected glimpse of The Abominble Snow Monster of the North as Donner and Rudolph hide from the creature, who walks past them, leaving giant footprints in the snow. Sam the Snowman (the Burl Ives-voiced narrator of the show) says of the monster: "He's mean! He's nasty! And he hates everything to do with Christmas!" We only see the creature's legs and hear its fierce roaring in this scene, but it's obvious that it's something to be feared.

The monster isn't heard from again for a while. We kind of forget about it as we learn just how much Rudolph and his new friend Hermey don't fit into their respective environments. Eventually they decide to run away together to get away from everyone who insists they're misfits (freaks, non-comformists, odd balls...). Not too long after they leave Rudolph's nose attracts Abominable's attention and we see his face for the first time as he peeks over the mountains. As Sam the Snowman says: "Like I said, the outside world is up to its ears in danger."

I think that, as a kid, I was heartened by the fact that Sam the Snowman (the narrator of the story) was so frightened by the monster's appearance, that even he had to hide behind his umbrella--shaking like a leaf. This made me feel a bit better about hiding behind my trusty blanket.

We get another reprieve from the monster for a bit as we meet Yukon Cornelius, and Burl Ives sings "Silver and Gold". But it's not long after the misfits and Yukon set out together that the Abominable Snow Monster (or the "Bumble", as Yukon call it) really starts chasing them in earnest. It's almost a half-hour into the show and we've only seen the creature three times, but the way they space it out is very effective. The first time we only see its legs. The second time it is peeking over the mountain tops. And this time we see its giant, pointy teeth for the first time as it pursues our heroes.

The monster returns to the background for a while (but is always on everyone's mind thanks to Rudolph's danged shiny nose) as the main characters meet the denizens of the Island of Misfit Toys. But Rudolph strikes out on his own so as to not endanger his new friends. Sam lets us know that the Abominable Snow Monster was always just one step behind Rudolph (wonder what exactly it was that the creature had against that shiny nose?). Rudolph eventually finds that his parents and girlfriend, Clarice, have been captured by the Snow Monster and are being kept in its cave. Rudolph tries to save them just as the monster is about to make a venison snack out of Clarice, but is knocked unconscious by the raging beast.

One of the best lines in the whole show comes when when the Snow Monster is standing menacingly over the four reindeer and Clarice tearfully exclaims: "Oh, why doesn't he get it over with?". Finally, Yukon and Hermey rescue the reindeer and render the monster harmless by pulling out its teeth. At this point it is what Yukon calls "a mighty humble Bumble", and ceases to be the frightful presence that it had been up to that point in the show.

Yukon and the Snow Monster disappear when they fall off a cliff, but they return at the end of the show. They show up at Santa's castle and we learn that Yukon has reformed the Bumble into a docile, friendly critter who only wants a job placing stars on top of Christmas trees--without even needing a step-ladder. Despite having the knowledge of the Abominable Snow Monster's ultimate, cuddly fate at the end of the program, I would still have to cower behind the blanket when it made it's first appearance during the following year's airing of "Rudolph".

The years have passed. I'm now a father myself. My daughter is now very familiar with the story of "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer" herself. I made a point of showing it to her when she was two or three years old. It was very exciting to see her finding the Abominable Snow Monster frightening like I did when I was little. I could recapture a bit of the feeling of the past by watching her experience the joys and terrors of the show for the first time. And, wouldn't you know, she even had to hide behind her own blanket when the creature would make an appearance! I finally broke down and bought "Rudolph" on DVD last year. Possibly as a result of repeated viewings beyond the once-annual airing on TV, she has already grown out of most of her fear of Abominable at the age of only five years old. I don't know exactly when I stopped hiding behind my blanket, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't until I was quite a bit older than five.

Here's my Little Monster enjoying "Rudolph" back in 2008 (age 3)

And here she is hiding from the Snow Monster, just like her dear old Monster Dad!

Thank you Rankin and Bass!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

As a bit of an epilogue, it's worth noting that Billie Mae Richards, the voice of Rudolph, just recently died on September 10, 2010.

Baby Names: Part 3

Here's another update on the Little Monsters' nicknames. In the first and second blogs about this topic I mainly stuck to the "Monster" and "Beast"-based names. I guess I figured that, since "Monster Dad" was writing them, the blogs should have a "Monster" angle to them. This only tells part of the story though. In reality, both of the Monsters have literally hundreds of nicknames. Anything can set off a new name (a physical trait, a newly reached milestone, a noise they make, laughing, crying, having the sniffles). Pretty much everything is fair game when it comes to nicknames.

The first Monster will be turning five in a couple days. As many of her names have come and gone over the years, it would be difficult to make an accurate survey of them. For that reason, this blog will concentrate on the relatively new names that have been given to the second Monster (or "The Littlest Monster" or "The Insane Beast") just for the freshness factor. One new "Monster"-type name does have to be added since "Baby Names: Part 2" though. Almost immediately after that one was published The Beast earned a new monicker which has really stuck (and which isn't really as much of an incendiary-sounding name as "Monster" or "Beast"). She's now frequently referred to as a "Critter". It can be as simple as "Critter" or "The Little Critter", but more frequently it's combined with other terms to form names like "Critter Beast" or "Beastly Critter", and it's also been modified into "Critterling" and "Critterly", either alone of combined with other names.

Anyway, onto the non-Monster names. Here's a pretty good sampling of some of the Littlest Monster's nicknames that she's picked up in her first eighteen months of life. The majority of these are take-offs of proper names (either of real people or of names of characters in movies and TV). The reason for most of these names should be pretty obvious, but I'll put the reasons for some of them (as well as the real names they are based on) after the names whenever it seems helpful.

Drool Barrymore: (Drew Barrymore, when she drools)

Droolie McCoy: (Julie McCoy from "The Love Boat", when she drools)

Mark Spitz: (Olympic hero Mark Spitz, drooling/spitting)

Spittin' Image: (when she's drooling/spitting)

Moistly Mozart: (Mostly Mozart, when she's drooling/spitting)

Dribble Glass: (drooling/spitting)

Adolph Spitler: (Adolph Hitler, drooling/spitting)

Adolph Hit-Ler: (Adolph Hitler, when she hits)

Adolph Sitler: (Adolph Hitler, when she sits down emphatically/falls into a sitting position)

Phil Crawlins: (Phil Collins, when she started crawling)

Digger Phelps: (a college basketball coach, when she uses her head to dig into your chest while holding her)

Ted Turner: (Ted Turner, when she uses her head as a wedge to wriggle out of your grasp)

Head Turner: (same as above)

Turner Network Television: (same reason as above)

Tina Turner: (same reason as above)

Long Head of the Law: (Long Arm of the Law, same reason as above)

Small Arm of the Law: (Long Arm of the Law, because she's small and also when she tries to escape from you by pushing away)

Small Arms Fire: (same as above)

Squintin' Tarantino: (Quentin Tarantino, when she is startled or in bright light and squints her eyes)

Christie Blinkley: (Christie Brinkley--former supermodel, when she blinks when startled)

Walker: Texas Ranger: (from the TV show of the same name, when she walks)

Spin Cycle: (when she spins around in circles or squiggles on the changing table)

Jack Tripper: (Jack Tripper from "Three's Company", when she trips herself up)

Jack Ripper: (Jack Tripper, when she destroys something by ripping it up)

Jack the Ripper: (same reason as above)

Kelly Ripper: (Kelly Ripa, same as above)

Fallin' Gong: (Falun Gong, when she stumbles)

Downward Dog: (named after the yoga position, used when she falls down)

Christina Reachie: (Christina Ricci, when she reaches for something)

Roy Liftenstein: (Roy Lichtenstein, when she lifts herself up on the changing table...)

Lifted Sister: (Twisted Sister, same reason as above)

Squealie Dan: (Steely Dan, when she makes squealing noises)

Observe-ine Junior: (Absorbine Jr., when she intensely watches something)

Jon Cryer: (Jon Cryer, when she cries)

Cryogenically Frozen Baby: (when she cries)

Crylie Cyrus: (Miley Cyrus, when she cries)

Hannah Moan-Tana: (Hanna Montana, when she moans and groans)

Moaner Lisa: (Mona Lisa, when she moans and groans)

Moaning Lisa: (Mona Lisa, when she moans and groans)

N-Groan Toenail: (Ingrown Toenail, when she moans and groans using an "N" sound)

Droppler Radar: (Doppler Radar, when she drops something)

Drop-Down Menu: (when she drops something)

Gargle-Mel: (Gargamel from "The Smurfs", when she makes a gargling noise)

Wavy Gravy: (Wavy Gravy of Woodstock fame, when she waves)

Bess Eatin': (Bess Eaton, when she eats something--usually something that she shouldn't)

Eatie Gourmet: (Edie Gorme, same reason as above)

Gasperski: (Kasperski computer security company, when she makes a gasping sound)

The Great Gaspie: (The Great Gatsby, when she gasps)

Toothsome Twosome: (when she bites--especially when she first got teeth)

Nibble-E-Peg: (when she bites)

Bite-Wing X-Ray: (when she bites)

Gronkenstein: (when she makes various "gronk" or "kronk" sounds in her sinuses)

Gronkowski: (Rob Gronkowski, New England Patriots tight end, same reason as above)

Kronkenstein: (same as above)

Walter Kronkite: (same as above)

Cronkle-Cut Potato: (Crinkle-cut potato, same reason as above)

A. Martinez: (when she makes "A" sounds)

Al Gore: (when she first started making sounds she'd utter something that sounded exactly like "Al Gore")

Troublesome Truck: (from the "Troublesome Trucks" of "Thomas the Tank Engine", when she causes trouble)

Fingerling Potato: (when she grabs with her little fingers)

Pat-Ner in Crime: (Partner in Crime, when she makes the classic pitter-patter walking noise)

Fartner in Crime: (Partner in Crime, when she farts or makes fart-like sounds)

Fart Lee Dykes: (Hart Lee Dykes--obscure New England Patriots draft bust from 1989, same reasons as above)

Thumbelina: (when she sucks her thumb. The first Monster was called "Thumble-Lena" for same reason)

Kelly Wigglesworth: (contestant from first season of "Survivor", when she wiggles to try to escape from your grasp)

Lenny & Squiggly: (Lenny & Squiggy from "Laverne & Shirley", same reason as above)

There's many more names that could be listed, but that's a pretty good sampling of at least one style of nicknames for the Insane Beastly Critter.

Here's Hart Lee Dykes (for anyone who's curious)

"The 'burbs"

With the recent October Challenge now over, it's time to undertake a much more daunting challenge. With much trepidation I am now going to attempt the near impossible: I will do my best to convince a doubting and resistant public that the 1989 movie "The 'burbs" is a great film. If I could get even just one non-believer to change his/her ways and become a fan of the movie I'd consider this challenge a success. Scoff if you will, but please at least continue reading and give me a chance before you totally close your minds to the possibility.

"The 'burbs" stars Tom Hanks, at the height of his first career as a movie funny man--not too long before he abandoned comedy and became "Tom Hanks: Serious Actor and Oscar Nominee/Multiple Winner". Sure, he has dabbled in funny material occasionally over the past twenty years (most notably by voicing Woody in the "Toy Story" movies), but there really is a clear line (marked by his first Oscar turn in "Philadelphia" in 1993) between his two acting careers. I know it was a long time ago, but perhaps you remember the old Tom Hanks. He first gained a certain amount of fame by starring in the early 1980s sitcom "Bosom Buddies". He quickly turned his comedic timing and knack for physical comedy to the movies, starring in such seminal 1980s comedies as "Splash" (1984), "Bachelor Party" (1984), "Volunteers" (1985), "The Money Pit" (1986), "Dragnet" (1987) and "Big" (1988). After "The 'burbs" he continued in that same comedic vein with "Turner and Hooch" (1989) and then started off the 1990s with "Joe Versus the Volcano" (1990) (another underrated "odd" comedy like "The 'burbs"), "A League of Their Own" (1992) and "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993). I guess he showed enough "serious" acting chops in "Sleepless in Seattle" and "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1990) to convince himself that this was the direction he wanted to go in. Winning the Best Actor Oscar for "Philadelphia" couldn't have hurt either.

Back to the movie. Co-starring with Tom in "The 'burbs" was an odd assortment of actors, some well-known and some unknown, who really came together to make a great cast: Bruce Dern, Carrie Fisher, Rick Ducommun, Corey Feldman, Henry Gibson, Gale Gordon and...Brother Theodore! Dick Miller even makes a great cameo appearance as a garbageman in one funny scene. "The 'burbs" was directed by Joe Dante, who had started his career working for uber-independent filmmaker Roger Corman. He is best known for such quirky horror and comedy movies as "The Howling" (1981), "Gremlins" (1984), "Explorers (1985), "Innerspace" (1987), "Gremlins 2: The Next Batch" (1990) and "Matinee" (1993). The music was done by Jerry Goldsmith, the composer of MANY great movie soundtracks, including: "Planet of the Apes" (1968), "Patton" (1970), "Tora! Tora! Tora!" (1970), "Chinatown" (1974), "Logan's Run" (1976), "Alien" (1979), as well as most of Joe Dante's movies, and many of the Star Trek movies and television shows. In "The 'burbs" he used a great combination of creepy, atmospheric horror-movie stuff intercut with some absolutely silly sounding comedy-movie music that fits the film perfectly.

For whatever reason, "The 'burbs" is such a quirky combination of comedy and horror elements that it wasn't able to find an audience when it was released (at least that's what I'm blaming). Even now, it doesn't really seem to even qualify as a "cult" movie--which would at least give it enough fans to be considered a success on some level. It seems like it simply appeared, disappeared and was forgotten about. Because of this everyone seems to think that it's a bad movie. I don't feel this is justified. There seem to be two camps that side up against "The 'burbs": those who have never seen it (or even heard of it for that matter) who have no interest in watching it now, and those who saw it when it came out and hated it (or at least disliked it). Either way, trying to convince someone to see the movie today seems to be tougher than trying to convince someone to join the Osama bin Laden fan club.

Believe it or not, I actually fall into the saw-it-when-it-came-out-and-didn't-like-it category. I was in the U.S. Army when it came out in 1989, stationed at Fort Knox, KY. There were two movie theaters on the post and, being a movie fan who didn't have much of a social life in his downtime (or a license for that matter), I tended to visit those theaters pretty often after the workday ended. Two theaters which offered one movie per week each didn't exactly offer a lot of variety. I remember walking the two miles or so to one if the theaters one day and seeing that "The 'burbs" was playing. My unit had just gotten back from spending the better part of a month training in the desert in Texas (Fort Bliss). I wasn't really up on the current movies and had not heard anything about "The 'burbs" (surprise, surprise). I did like Tom Hanks though and enjoyed seeing "Big" not too long before at the very same theater. Since I'd have to walk all the way back to the barracks with nothing to show for it if I didn't see the movie I was a captive audience. Whether I would have chosen to see "The 'burbs" at a megaplex which offerred all the rest of the movies out at that time I don't know. Not having much choice I paid for my ticket and saw it. I walked out of the theater after the movie thinking "What the hell was that?". Nearly everyone I know who saw the movie when it came out had the same reaction and never thought much about it again. I probably would have fallen into this category as well, except...like I said, I didn't have much of a social life.

The following week I found myself taking the long walk to the movie theater once again, having no idea what would be playing, but feeling in the mood to watch a movie. Wouldn't you know, they didn't get a new movie in the week since I had last visited. Yes, I stood in front of the theater staring at the marquee which said the the movie playing that evening would be "The 'burbs"! My first thought was to go back to the barracks and watch TV, but I was there and I would have had to walk all the way back with nothing to show for a wasted night. So...I bought another ticket and walked back in for what I was sure would be a boring re-watching of a bad movie. Then something strange happened: I loved it! It seems that the subject matter of "The 'burbs" is just kooky enough to require more than one viewing to really "get it". I believe that I even went back to the theater again later that same week to watch it for a third time.

Four or five months later I left the Army and returned home. One of the first things I did when I got back and was visiting with friends was to ask them if they had seen the movie "The 'burbs". Most of my friends had seen it (and didn't regard it too highly of course). When I asked them there must have been an excitement in my voice that indicated I loved the movie, because everyone seemed to cautiously indicate that they felt the movie was "okay". It didn't take much brainpower to realize that they were trying to shield me from the fact that they actually felt it was a total piece of crap. Luckily, they were willing to cave in to my pestering and watch the movie again on video. After a lot of pointing out just what I thought made it so funny they saw the light and were converted into believers! One friend who had not seen it watched it with me and (despite my constant pointing out of all the little details) loved it as well. You might be thinking that these people merely felt sorry for me and were just humoring me, but we've watched the movie together a number of times over the years and still quote it endlessly to this day, more than twenty years later.

I think the biggest problem with trying to show the movie to someone who's never seen it today is the simple fact that it's now over twenty years old. It's no longer a recent release ans does have an undeniable late-80s look and feel to it. However, I still think that the humor and spirit of the movie continue to shine through.

Here's the trailer for the movie:

The entire film takes place in a little suburban cul-de-sac called Mayfield Place. The main characters are all neighbors on this street. A new family, the Klopeks, has recently moved in, and no one can figure out what they're all about. They seem to have no interest in taking care of their lawn (a suburban no-no) and strange noises come from their dilapidated house at all hours. Tom Hanks plays Ray Peterson, who lives next door to the mysterious newcomers. Rick Ducommun and Bruce Dern play neighbors Art Weingartner and Mark Rumsfield. These three eventually come to the conclusion that the Klopeks are up to no good. Ray at first tries his best to be reasonable and deny that anything untoward is going on, but eventually the evidence piles up and there seems to be no other possibility. One of their other neighbors seems to have disappeared and the trio believe that he has been kidnapped (perhaps even murdered) by the Klopeks. They decide to break into the Klopek's house to find evidence while the family is gone for the day. Much action, drama and hilarity ensue as they try to prove that the foreigners are up to no good..

While I've loved "The 'burbs" for a long time, I do have to say that living in a small neighborhood myself has added to the fun of the movie. Whenever you find yourself talking about the eccentricities of your neighbors you are reminded of the comic situations of the movie. While it's definitely a comedy, there does seem to be a kernel of a caution story in it as well. You experience the strangeness of the new neighbors right along with the main characters. You can see the dangers of judging someone who's different from yourself. The clues build up and the accusations snowball until it gets to a point where something that would have seemed almost unfathomable at the beginning seems to be the only possible answer. Despite all the comedy, at the end almost everything is explained and the Klopeks seem to be innocent victims of a bunch of paranoid neighbors whose imaginations get the better of them. Ray finally sees the error of his actions and lashes out against Art with a speech about how wrong they were to jump to conclusions about the Klopeks:

"So they're different. So they keep to themselves. Can you blame them? They live next door to people who break into their house...and burn it down while they're gone for the day! Remember what you were saying about people in the 'burbs? People like Skip? People who mow their lawn for the 800th time and then snap? Well, that's us! It's not them. That's us. We're the ones who are vaulting over fences and peeking in through people's windows. We're the ones who are throwing garbage in the street and lighting fires! We're the ones who are acting suspicious and paranoid, Art. We're the lunatics! Us! It's not them! It's us."

The ending is actually a bit of a surprise. Are the Klopeks innocent victims or guilty monsters? You'll have to watch the movie to find out, but it makes for a fun ride if you're willing to go along with an open mind.

Here's one of the funniest scenes of the movie:

Once you "get" the humor of "The 'burbs" it starts to seem like a true masterpiece. Nearly every line in the movie is quotable. I find myself struggling to not speak practically every line aloud while watching it (people seem to find that annoying for whatever reason). Every character seems to have his or her place in the proceedings. Even someone as annoying as Corey Feldman is watchable in this movie (his character, Ricky Butler is supposed to be kind of annoying). It's tough for me to pick the best parts of the movie, but there are many hilarious scenes: when Ray, Art and Mark first spy on the Klopeks and see some odd behavior, when Ray and Mark drop in on the Klopeks for a visit with their wives, When the neighbors break into the missing man's house to see if they can find clues about what happened to him, when Art and Ray discover what they believe to be the femur bone of their missing neighbor in the Klopek's yard, when they undertake the mission to enter the Klopek's house to gather evidence against them... The fun all starts right away with the brilliant opening scene. The Universal logo that opens the movie turns into a tracking shot which zooms in from a view of the earth in outer space right down to the cul-de-sac and to a street-level view of the Klopek's house at night. From that moment on everything is all about the neighborhood vs. the Klopeks.

If anyone is willing to take a chance on this movie for the first (or second) time, it's available on DVD and can be watched in a number of places online. I'm willing to lend out my DVD to anyone interested, and am always happy to arrange a screening for friends. I promise to try my best to keep the live running commentary track to a minimum!

The "October Horror Challenge" Post-Game Report

Happy Halloween to everyone out there! Today (October 31st) is not only Halloween, but also the last day of the month of October (obviously). That means that Monster Dad's challenge to himself to watch 31 horror programs in the month is now over. Now it's time to see the results and break it all down.

The final score of the challenge finds Monster Dad with 46 movies/shows watched--easily besting October's 31 days. The fifteen point differential was very satisfying to reach. However, Monster Dad admittedly did set the difficulty level pretty low for himself. He not only allowed himself to count science-fiction subject matter and comedies as "horror", but he also considered it okay to count episodes of television shows too--though they did at least have to be episodes of shows that were at least an hour long. That means thirty minute episodes of shows like "The Twilight Zone" couldn't be counted--regardless of how awesome they might have been. The question is, what happens to the score if some of this "questionable" material is disqualified by someone with a tougher definition of what can be allowed?

The first entry that would probably have to go would be the Halloween episode from second season of "The Love Boat". Yes, it was a Halloween episode, and it did have the immortal Vincent Price as a guest star (not to mention Gopher, Doc and Isaac dressing up as Dracula, a werewolf and Frankenstein, respectively, for the cruise's Halloween party), but it's still "The Love Boat". Okay horror snobs, we won't count that one!

Next up is all the episodes of "Kolchak: The Night Stalker" that Monster Dad watched. Though there's a good amount of humor in many episodes, the subject matter is most certainly appropriate for the challenge. Unfortunately, it was a TV show and the episodes can't be considered movies--if the challenge had to consist of movies only. All told, Monster Dad watched (and counted) eight episodes of "Kolchak" during the month. There was also the "Graveyard Shift" episode of "Circle of Fear"/"Ghost Story". Add in the "Love Boat" episode and we're up to ten questionable entries. That would make for a final score of Monster Dad-36, October-31.

Now comes the most controversial aspect of the challenge--namely, when a movie is predominantly meant to be a comedy (intentional), just how much horror has to be mixed in for it to be counted? "Return of the Living Dead" has plenty of intentional horror-based humor, but I don't think it can be denied that it's a horror movie. On the other hand, "The 'burbs" is very much a comedy, one which has a number of horror elements at its core. Similarly, "Young Frankenstein" does feature the characters from Mary Shelley's horror classic, but it is a Mel Brooks comedy. And how about "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein"? This one not only features Dracula, The Wolf Man and Frankenstein's monster, but it's a Universal movie too (the company that produced the original movies that featured those monsters) and stars Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Lon Chaney, Jr. as The Wolf Man and Glenn Strange as Frankenstein's Monster. They all played those same monsters at some point in the original Universal monster movies as well. Similar issues could be raised with other comedy movies on the list: "Shaun of the Dead", "Ghostbusters", "The Lost Skeleton Returns Again" and "Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla". Other than "Return of the Living Dead" I could understand a horror-purist lodging a complaint about the rest of these titles. this makes seven more titles ineligible. Subtract seventeen titles and were suddenly faced with Monster Dad finishing with only thirty entries--which would obviously not qualify as a successful challenge. Final score: October-31, Monster Dad-30.

Finally, where does one draw the line when it comes to science-fiction? The inclusion of movies like "Wizards", "Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet", "The Cosmic Man", "Project Moon Base" and "Time After Time" would all come into question. Many of these have horror elements, but are predominantly science-fiction in nature. Not only that, but "Manbeast! Myth or Monster?" was a documentary. That's another six movies potentially wiped off the board--leaving a total of only twenty-four qualified entries. Final score: October-31, Monster Dad-24.

Luckily, this was Monster Dad's challenge. It's Monster Dad's blog and it's Monster Dad's rules. Monster Dad wanted this challenge to be fun and entertaining as well as "challenging". He's not a huge fan of "real" horror or slasher movies and stuff like that. He could have watched every entry in the "Friday the 13th", "Halloween", A Nightmare on Elm Street" and "Saw" series, but that wouldn't have been as much fun for him as this particular mix of old favorites and new-to-him movies and shows proved to be. Also, he wouldn't have been able to share any of those movies with The Little Monster. Watching stuff like "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein", "Young Frankenstein" and, yes, the Halloween episode of "The Love Boat" with his Little Monster are what Monster Dad is all about. In the end Monster Dad was able to watch a number of DVDs from his own collection (old favorites as well as stuff he'd been waiting for the right time to watch), DVDs from Netflix, DVDs from various public libraries, and various presentations of movies at theaters (including entries in the Silver Screen Classics, Zombie Feast, RiffTrax Live and Spooktacular series put on at various venues in Worester and Millbury, Massachusetts and Keene, New Hampshire). No matter how you choose to count it, the challenge has made for a great month of viewing for Monster Dad, and the "official" final score will indeed end up being:

MONSTER DAD-46, OCTOBER-31

For all the details on each of the entries, as well as a day-by-day log of exactly what was watched and when, please refer to the original blog about the challenge, "An Absolutely Horrible Month".