Stay up Late, or set the Tivo
Apparently taking a break from endless Hepburn & Tracy movies, TCM (Turner Classic Movies) is kicking it cult style Friday night, September 5th, with a Ray Harryhausen film, an Ed Wood Movie, and a Ray Dennis Steckler double feature.
First up at the stroke of midnight is the under-rated Ray Harryhuasen film Three Worlds of Gulliver. Once a staple of kiddie matinees the pic doesn’t really get the love it deserves. Granted the script strips away all of Jonathan Swift’s satire, but it is a visual treat and besides outside of English Lit who cares about 18th Century satire, Gulliver is about shipwrecks and giants and tiny people, and it all looks great.
Around 2 A.M. we get two Ray Dennis Steckler movies with perhaps the greatest titles in film history: Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? and Rat Pfink a Boo Boo. The titles alone should tell you if you are interested, but who wouldn’t want to see what warranted these titles? The films are clunky and amateur hour. Personally I think they were a big influence on John Waters and even if they weren’t should appeal to fans of his early Baltimore movies. Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? is a romantic, zombie musical, and Rat Pfink a Boo Boo is a Batman spoof that pre-dates Batman Forever by decades. Both films need to be seen if for no other reason you can say you’ve seen them.
If you’ve survived all of that, which I doubt, then you can finish off the night with my personal favorite Ed Wood film, Bride of the Monster. Plot, schmott! It is just a lot of fun watching Bela Lugosi, Tor Johnson, and bunch of wannabe actors play monsters with an alcoholic cross dressing director.
“bride”
Once that is over you can finally go to sleep secure in the knowledge there is nothing worth watching or doing on Saturday!
