Episode Recap: The Son of Ghoul Show “Mr. Wise Guy” (March 6, 1999)

With Son of Ghoul’s big 31st anniversary show this weekend, and indeed, his actual 31st anniversary today right now yo, what say we take a look back at a vintage episode? I always like doing these. (My wi-fi currently hates me and wants me dead, so if I blaze through this, particularly in the second-half, that’s why.)

31 years is unbelievable for any television personality, but especially so when it’s the endangered-species known as “horror host.” Ironically, 31 almost seems a little, I don’t know, anti-climatic, I guess, after the massive hype that surrounded his big 30th last year. I certainly covered it, and was even present when SOG was fittingly honored at Monsterfestmania.

I thought of a couple different topics to post in honor of his 31st continuous year on Northeast Ohio television. I could’ve covered the earliest episode I taped (The Vampire Bat, in 1997), or his 12th anniversary show, or even the episode featuring the first piece of mail I ever sent in to him. I even briefly considered an article detailing a lot of the SOG memorabilia I’ve amassed over the years. I decided against each one of those, however, for a variety of reasons: I’ll save my earliest taped episode for the 20th anniversary of the broadcast this fall, I didn’t feel like covering Frankenstein’s Daughter during his 12th anniversary, and I’m not ready to detail my cringe worthy (yet nostalgic) first letter to him. As for an article focused on SOG memorabilia, I just couldn’t muster up the moxy to drag all that stuff out for a picture-taking session.

Nope, I decided on our subject today for one very simple reason: I just plain like the movie, 1942’s Mr. Wise Guy. Heck, I just plain like the episode in general, and to me that speaks more about my Son of Ghoul fandom than any ‘special’ occurrence I could dig up. After all, this was how the show usually was (is) to me each weekend: A fun, kick-back-and-chill movie showcase.

So, join me now as I detail The Son of Ghoul Show, as aired on WAOH TV-29 in Akron and WAX TV-35 in Cleveland (“The Cat”) and taped by yours truly waaaay back on March 6, 1999…

(Also, I’ve been on a real kick for The Cat lately, even more so than usual. This comes from that late-90s sweet-spot of the channel, so I’m happy with the choice. And, if that kick keeps up, I may dig something else out from the station to cover. You keep pushing me and I just might, pal.)

I vividly recall this being a surprise episode. Y’see, SOG was on twice-a-week at that point: 8-10 PM, Fridays and Saturdays, same episode. This was handy, because you could sample on Friday, and tape-as-needed on Saturday. But, for whatever reason, he was only on Saturday that week, a fact he briefly mentions in his intro (above).

I think (think) he was preempted totally the night before due to some women’s college basketball tournament The Cat was broadcasting/simulcasting/whatevercasting. So because he was only on Saturday that week, I couldn’t risk missing a must-have episode, especially with no knowledge of what the movie would be. Because said basketball tournament was concluding that Saturday, there was no telling when SOG’s show would actually begin; I had to start the VCR recording waaaaay ahead of time, which was why I wound up with like an hour of that stupid basketball game on the tape before the episode started.

This obsessiveness proved fortuitous. That night, we were at my aunt’s house for some party I was quite probably miserable at, and I flipped to The Cat to see what episode I was capturing. When it finally started and Mr. Wise Guy was revealed, I was pleased as punch. SOG had ran this film, I don’t know, a year or so prior, and I had regretted not capturing it then. I actually liked the movie!

And I wasn’t the only one; SOG himself mentions that he likes it as well during his intro. How often did (does) that happen?!

The reason I initially liked this film so much largely had to do with what it represented: A trip back to a more innocent time in cinema. This is pure, early-1940s matinee entertainment. It’s an East Side Kids (you know, the Bowery Boys, except not) film, so there’s some light hooliganism about, but even with that, an escaped convict, a murder, a death-row sentence, and a real-life war going on, it’s all so light and breezy that it never seems too heavy. I’m hesitant to ascribe the term “innocence” to a film that contains all that, but like I said, this is matinee entertainment; it’s not exactly a weighty, socially-conscious drama.

The idea of an East Side Kids film showing up on a horror hosted program may seem odd, but as SOG states during his intro, Ghoulardi himself used to run these (and fittingly, on Saturdays!). If these were good enough for Ghoulardi, they should be good enough for any other host, too. And somehow, to me they seem to ‘fit’ just fine. Maybe that’s because I grew up with SOG showing them occasionally (still does, in fact), but looked at objectively, they still work. It’s not like a b-western, which unless it shared some horror influence or other odd quirk (Terror of Tiny Town, anyone?), just wouldn’t seem to fit. Look, I can’t really adequately explain why it works so well, it just does.

And, in a trend that continues to this day, SOG doesn’t tamper with these kinds of films; no drop-ins, no sound effects. Just the movie straight. Evidently he has some real appreciation for these flicks, and we’re all the better for it. Even when missing those elements so well-known to SOG fans, it flows perfectly.

The title of the film comes from a moniker given to (and approved by) Leo Gorcey’s character “Muggs” McGinnis (first name: Ethelbert), who is deemed so several times throughout the picture.

The simple synopsis of the plot: The East Side Kids are sent to reform school. There’s a bit more to it than that, though. Unjustly accused of stealing a truck (a truck that, unbeknownst to them, houses an escaped convict), they’re sent to a reformatory run by a kind warden, a cruel guard, and a couple of troublesome inmates that are secretly in cahoots with aforementioned cruel guard. Also on the docket: Bill Collins, older brother of cast member Bobby Jordan’s Danny Collins, is accused of murder and sentenced to death row. Eventually these plotlines unbelievably though perhaps predictably, collide. And since this is from 1942, it all ends on a relatively happy note. ‘Cept for the dude who died, anyway.

Needless to say, much of this is played for laughs. Even while incarcerated, Gorcey’s gang never seems too concerned with their situation. Even as Danny frets over his brother’s predicament back in the real world, the other guys just sort of blow it off – which admittedly does play out a little strange. I can’t imagine that being realistic even back in ’42.

Still, as a whole, the movie is entertaining. Indeed, I wasn’t sure if I’d still get a kick out of it when I sat down to convert my VHS to DVD for this review, but it greatly held my attention throughout. I was even genuinely amused by certain moments, which can’t always be said of semi-comedies of this vintage.

Look, the movie is in the public domain, so don’t just take my word for it; check it out for yourself. Since SOG didn’t add any sound effects, you’ll see it (almost) as it aired here!

(Fun Fact: Some years ago at a thrift store, I stumbled upon a 3-VHS boxset of East Side Kids films. Included were both of their Bela Lugosi collaborations, Spooks Run Wild and Ghosts on the Loose, as well as the title that really spurred the eventual purchase: Mr. Wise Guy. I never watched any of them, don’t think I even played any of the tapes, and subsequently the set became buried in my mound of crap videos. It should still be around here, somewhere, which is good, because unknown to me at the time was that the company who put it out, Passport Productions, was spawned from the ashes of Amvest Video, who we’ve seen here before. Cool winnins!)

Unfortunately, the movie isn’t perfect, and it doesn’t have much to do with plot, but rather stereotypes that were prevalent at the time. Ernest Morrison, often known as “Sunshine Sammy,” is the victim of some unfortunate racial jokes, as his character “Scruno” is the outlet for some now-wildly-inappropriate stereotyping. Look, I don’t claim to be a super-PC-advocate, but man, even I was uncomfortable with some of the gags at his expense.

That said, I am an advocate of not editing things of this nature to reflect current social attitudes. Yes, some of the jokes have aged terribly, but they reflect the time in which the film was made; you can’t rewrite history, only learn from it. And besides, the jokes are incredibly dated, but never really mean-spirited, if that counts for anything.

And with all that said, we now come to the rest of the show…

The first skit proper is actually an old bit from the WOAC TV-67 days, and I love it because it perfectly sums up SOG’s sense of humor, which very often syncs up with mine.

In a parody of the whole “carrying the Olympic torch” thing, here SOG dutifully marches with a plunger triumphantly raised, only to enter the studio bathroom and begin plunging! That’s all there is to it, and it’s great!

Truth be told, SOG doesn’t feature heavily heavily into this episode. I mean, he does, he shows up after each commercial-break, but it’s not new bit after new bit after new bit. His hosting duties, while prominent, maybe aren’t quite as prominent as they usually were, and I think that has much to do with this spot right here.

In a segment that takes up a healthy chunk of running time, SOG and guest Carl Thompson speak extensively on the Frightvision convention, coming later that month. Yes, Frightivision, the SOG-hosted horror convention; we’ve talked about it before! Here, SOG and Thompson thoroughly go over the list of guests and events coming to the show, and it goes on for around 8 minutes, which is pretty much a lifetime in horror-show-time.

That’s not a complaint on my part, though; I could not be happier this segment is present! I talked more extensively on the convention in the piece I just linked to (another SOG episode, Plan 9 From Outer Space, which aired later that same month), but Frightvision was a BIG deal. It was also my very first horror convention of any kind. Long story short: I positively loved it. I got to meet Ben “Gill Man” Chapman, Mark “Lost in Space Guy” Goddard, SOG’s own Fidge (who was great), saw Tom Savini (but didn’t meet him until the following year), and came home with some very cool loot (including a vintage SOG TV-67 promo card, which I still have to this day). All of the fanaticism that manifests itself in me for each and every Ghoulardifest began at the very first Frightvision, and for that I hold the fondest of memories.

So yes, seeing the segment that so aptly demonstrates the swirling hype surrounding Frightvision in the weeks leading up to it, that’s the sort of thing that can take me directly back in time. And movie aside, to me this is the defining moment of this particular episode.

An email segment. More (!) information on Frightvision is presented, and a spider glove that apparently belonged to Fidge is shown. Unless y’all want me to go email by email, there’s not much more I can say about it.

I would love to show the old school, wildly obsolete SOG email address, back when having an email address was still semi-innovative, but in the interest of avoiding confusion, I’ll refrain.

In the second mail segment, the reading of letters devolves into a long, drawn out explosion of fake fart noises, which has SOG and his crew dying with laughter. SOG: “Can you tell we’re so easily amused here?” Like the toilet torch earlier in the show, it’s a juvenile, and therefore riotous, moment. This is the stuff that helped cement my sense of humor, gang. You want someone to blame? Blame SOG.

Because my wi-fi is in a seemingly-perpetual state of precariousness, there were two other bits amidst all this insanity that I’m choosing to skip. One, a “Captain Kanga-Ghoul,” and the other, an on-location interview at a liquor store that happened to be one of Frightvision’s sponsors, were fun, sorta-filler bits, but frankly, I don’t have all that much to say about them. Also, I’d like to punch my wi-fi in the face.

Also, here is the point where I’d usually look at interesting (or so I think) commercials that aired during an original broadcast. I’m going to skip that feature this time around. Why? Because basically all of the ones I would have chosen were already covered in that previously-linked Plan 9 From Outer Space SOG episode recap. And the other, a goofy homegrown promo for a showing of Reefer Madness, was briefly looked at in the The Cat article I linked to way at the start of this post. I love it when I do my own work for me!

It all works out though, because I can end this article in accordance with the way this show itself ends: As the outro opens, SOG is seen jokingly patting his phony beard back into place, along with a “We’re not done yet!”

But, it’s what he says right after that that sums up not only the conclusion to this particular episode, but also the continuing 31 year odyssey his show has been on: “They say you’re not done till the show’s over! Or until you’re out of toilet paper; then you’re done!” I think I can speak on the behalf of SOG’s many fans when I say I hope SOG never runs out of toilet paper.

Boy, that sounded so much more philosophical in my head.

Happy 31st anniversary, Son of Ghoul!

(PS – I’d be remiss if I didn’t link to my legendary, groundbreaking, earth-shattering, trendsetting interview with the man himself!)

(PPS – They may not have been able to repeat this year, but man, I still love the Cleveland Cavaliers. I’ll stick with you guys win or lose! Just thought I should mention that somewhere, since the loss is naturally still on the mind of so many Northeast Ohioans right now.)

The CBS / Diet Coke Sneak Peak Promo VHS (1997)

Look at this incredible piece of 1990s television and VHS memorabilia!

This isn’t a super recent find; I came across it at a thrift store some months back, but man, I knew, knew it had to come home with me. And so it did! The content is right up my alley, and it’s still sealed, too! The price? Under a buck! Cool winnins!

As you can see, it’s a promotional VHS presented by both Diet Coke and CBS, given out in advance of the 1997 television season. Yep, this was the fall line-up on CBS! While out and about hunting for tapes, sometimes it’s easy for me to forget how neat they can be, especially after passing the 9000th copy of Titanic, but this is definitely one of the good’uns.

What’s really amazing about this, from a personal standpoint, is that even though I myself didn’t own this video back in the day, I remember so much of that ’97 CBS line-up. Even what I didn’t watch myself, I vividly recall being ‘around’ nevertheless. Advertisements in TV Guide and what have you.

But listen, this isn’t going to be a big huge full in-depth review of the tape, and for one very simple reason: I refuse to crack the shrinkwrap, man! I just can’t do it. I’ve never come across one of these before, and currently there’s only one like it on eBay…for a whopping $35! Whether that means it’s actually rare or not, I couldn’t say, though I doubt it; there was a time when preview cassettes (and later, DVDs) like this were fairly commonplace. Maybe still are, I don’t know. Nevertheless, my copy is going to stay minty sealed fresh – though I’m stretching the term minty here, since my copy is a little beat-up and dirty. Evidently someone did not appreciate the majesty of this tape the way yours truly does!

(Looking on eBay, it appears CBS released preview tapes such as this for several years. I’m not going to say I’ll go out of my way for any others, but should I come across them while thrifting, well, that’s a no-brainer purchase for sure.)

So, the front cover. The whole thing is apparently hosted by Ray Romano, whose sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond was steadily picking up steam around that time, if it hadn’t already. That was the season I started watching his show, though it was near the end of the year; actually, I think it had hit summer reruns when I first jumped on board. Anyway, it’s interesting to look back at the show in its earlier years; eventually it would be the cornerstone of CBS’ powerhouse Monday night line-up of sitcoms. (I watched the show avidly for years, though truth be told, it hasn’t worn particularly well for me.)

Cybill, the appropriately-named sitcom starring Cybill Shepherd, I never watched back in the day, though I caught some syndicated episodes in more recent times. Dellaventura and Michael Hayes were and are unknown to me outside of this cover, though the latter appears to feature David Caruso in some capacity, and that just puts the whole CSI: Miami pre-credits-pun thing in my head.

However, it’s the appropriate pictorial references to Meego and The Gregory Hines Show, neither of which I ever recall watching, that provide the real reason I’m so excited to own this tape. Y’see, there’s one very specific factor that makes this VHS a must-own, and it ain’t Ray Barone. Rather, the answer is found in Meego and Gregory The Hines Show, or to be precise, the block they were a part of…

Do ya see it?! Urkel! Yes, URKEL! The presence of Steve Urkel can only mean one thing: A Friday night block of sitcoms aimed at kids too young to go out and do anything else. That’s the pool CBS was jumping in that fall, and Family Matters was jumping with them.

Y’see, ABC’s Friday night sitcoms, deemed TGIF, was a big deal for quite some time. I absolutely grew up with it, and there’s a good chance you did too. I certainly have my share of nostalgic memories pertaining to the line-up (well, various line-ups), though in this more jaded day and age, it may be hard for some modern audiences to understand just why TGIF was such a dominate force. It was though, and while by no means was he the only reason, a big, big factor in that TGIF dominance was indeed Steve Urkel.

Meant to be a one-time-only character on a show that was supposedly facing cancellation, Jaleel White’s uber-nerd Steve Urkel instead became the de facto face of Family Matters and, for a time, a legit cultural phenom. Dude totally saved the series, stole the spotlight from ostensible star Al Powell Reginald Vel Johnson, got his own dolls, his own cereal, even his own novelty dance! Mystery Science Theater 3000 later brilliantly ripped into the (inexplicable?) phenomenon, and admittedly the Urkel character grew tiresome (and the storylines of Family Matters more insane) as the series progressed into the mid and late-1990s, but there’s no denying that, for a few years there, Urkel was one of the faces of ’90s television.

But you know what? I still like Family Matters! Oh sure, much of that has to do with nostalgia, the show was a big part of my childhood for sure, but as dumb (and crazy) as it could occasionally be, I still find myself enjoying it when I watch nowadays. Indeed, I’d say Family Matters is the definitive TGIF show, or at least tied with Boy Meets World. (Sorry Full House, you lose.) If you didn’t grow up during the 1990s, I’m not sure you’d get it, but those of us that were there, we know. Maybe. I do, at any rate.

ANYWAY, for the fall of ’97 CBS managed to snag Family Matters and other-TGIF-mainstay Step By Step from ABC and used them to headline the “CBS Block Party,” their very own attempt at a TGIF-ish line-up. Truth be told, both shows, and TGIF in general, were a little long-in-the-tooth by 1997 (and in my particular case, I was about to discover Son of Ghoul, which left little time for anything else Friday evenings), but there was a residual name-factor at play, so along with Meego and The Gregory Hines Show, CBS acquired Family Matters and Step By Step and proceeded to take TGIF head-on.

Annnnd it didn’t really work. None of the shows lasted beyond that season – some spectacularly so (Meego only made it six episodes!). Family Matters wound up being placed on hiatus mid-season, with the remaining episodes burned off during the summer of ’98. Still, despite the ultimate failure, as an experiment in late-90s programming and featuring two very 1990s shows, the CBS Block Party is an interesting subject to look back on, if nothing else. (Furthermore, while TGIF lived on, it was never really the same, though Boy Meets World continued to fight the good fight).

And that my friends is why this tape is such an important find for yours truly: It represents a piece of nostalgia tied directly into a programming experiment that ultimately didn’t fly. I couldn’t ask for anything more!

But what about the other shows promoted on the back cover of the tape? The Bryant Gumbel thing and Brooklyn South, I can’t say much about those. But Cosby and George & Leo I absolutely remember. Coming a few years after his previous, far more popular sitcom, Cosby I caught now and then, but frankly never thought it was very good. George & Leo, however, I liked a lot. It only lasted that single season, but I enjoyed it, and looking back, it was my first entry into what would end up being an endearing Bob Newhart fandom, though I wasn’t cognizant of that at the time.

So seeing all that plastered on the tape is an added bonus for me. Steve Urkel and Bob Newhart sharing the same stage? Did that ever happen prior? Or after, for that matter? Thas history, man.

Anyway, dig the helpfully included schedule on the back cover; it’s a veritable study in late-1990s television, albeit a CBS-centric one. (Well duh!) The only thing missing is David Letterman’s goofy smile to complete the package, though since this was the prime time line-up, his exclusion is understandable. Disregarding the shows I just don’t know much about, there’s not a whole lot listed that I actively hate. Except The Nanny. I detest The Nanny and always have. Also, I wonder how Don Johnson felt about Nash Bridges getting Step By Step as a lead-in? That’s not exactly a seamless transition!

Finally, I love the big WKBN TV-27 Youngstown sticker slapped on the back, even if they’re not quite my CBS affiliate (a WOIO sticker would have made this the ultimate). This isn’t unusual; the $35 copy on eBay demonstrates a sticker from the respective television market that one hails from, so tailoring these to local needs was evidently the norm. I would imagine this tape was made available for cheap (free?) in video stores, supermarkets, wherever VHS tapes were sold in WKBN’s market. I remember getting an NBC fall preview DVD in the early/mid-2000s at Best Buy, so I’ll go with that mindset regarding this CBS VHS.

On the surface, this may not seem like a “big” find, and in the grand scheme things, or at least in the grand scheme of my disturbingly large video collection, I guess it’s not. Nevertheless, it’s still amazing how this one transports me right back to the fall of 1997. Man, (I was in 5th grade! That’s mind-blowing to realize!) It’s a cool promotional representation of network television in the late-1990s, including some throwbacks to the earlier-1990s, as part of a TV experiment that ultimately didn’t take. Add in the looks at the shows that did take, and you’ve got an invaluable view of a very specific era in broadcasting. And I’m just going by the sleeve! I can only imagine what it’s like actually watching this!

I don’t know, maybe I should crack the shrinkwrap? Or do I dare hold out hope for a double instead? Oh the decisions that I must face!

Episode Recap: The Ghoul Show’s “House on Haunted Hill” (September 2, 2002)

I should probably wait till the 15th anniversary on September 2, 2017 to post this article, but I don’t care.

I’ve mentioned before how I avidly stayed up and watched (and taped!) The Ghoul on WBNX TV-55 every Friday night – in the late-1990s and most of 2000, anyway. I’ve also mentioned how when WBNX moved him to Sunday nights (technically Monday mornings; 12 AM time slot) in the fall of 2000, I kept taping, but still being in grade school, staying up to watch was no longer feasible. He was eventually pushed back to 1 AM, though my situation remained the same. I kept taping (and taping…and taping…) the show, but because of all the other duties and interests of a teenager, I could never get around to picking and choosing which to keep, or even watch, like I could when it was on Fridays. The end result? I eventually wound up with boxes of tapes, either unmarked or with a vague “The Ghoul” scrawled on them.

On one hand, my dereliction of duty was understandable. You see, the wind had been taken completely out of my sails; when it moved, the show was (mostly) gutted of all the momentum it had built since debuting in the summer of 1998. For the most part, host segments were cut back, drop-ins were, uh, dropped from many of the movies, which in turn was a side-effect of the cheesy old horror and sci-fi flicks being limited in favor of newer fare, a good portion of which wasn’t from the genres The Ghoul was known for. And even when they were, they were newer, bigger-budgeted, ‘real’ movies. I wrote about one such episode here, and took a closer look at the history of the show as a whole here.

Despite that, around 2011, I made a concerted effort to dig out and duly mark each of these tapes – finally. Besides the mental well-being of knowing what I had recorded years prior, this also served the purpose of essentially giving me ‘new’ episodes of The Ghoul. And luckily, as of late I had been itching for some new-to-me Ghoul. Not some Ghoul that I had watched and merely forgotten about (though I’ve got plenty of those too), but a new episode – or as close to a new episode as I could get nowadays, anyway. And that’s where today’s post comes in.

This doesn’t come from that 2011 notating project. Oh no, this was an unknown-to-me (well, utterly-forgotten-to-me) recording I rediscovered only some months ago. Just when I think I’ve found ’em all, a new one pops up! Buried at the end of an 8-hour tape that was properly marked otherwise comes The Ghoul’s airing of 1959’s House on Haunted Hill, and it definitely hit every point I had been hoping to write about. Despite the Sunday night/Monday morning slot (this originally aired at 1 AM!), this was one of those rare-for-the-time “old style” shows; that is, for all intents and purposes it’s like the Friday night broadcasts I hold such fond memories of. An old, ostensibly-classic (more on that in a bit) horror movie, complete with audio and video drop-ins, and loaded with plenty of Ghoul segments – I couldn’t have asked for a better rediscovery!

And as it turned out, regarding that less-than-stellar time slot, this broadcast holds an additional historical aspect, one I am fortunate to have captured: As The Ghoul himself pointed out above in the intro, this was the last show in which he was scheduled at that time! Yep, starting the following week (or actually, later that same week), The Ghoul Show was back on Fridays! Now, this wasn’t a return to the late-1990s glory days of the show, mind you; it was scheduled at 3:30 AM (!), which means technically it became a Saturday morning program. Also, the show itself really didn’t change; I’ve got that first back-to-Friday show, and aside from an all-new open (which means the “In Mono…” intro I used above as my header, and which I really really like, was evidently last seen here), it was still more-or-less what it had been since the fall of 2000.

Still, The Ghoul seems fairly happy with the move whenever it’s mentioned throughout this episode, and I guess I concur; while 3:30 AM wasn’t exactly ideal (it wouldn’t end until 5:30-6:00 AM!), staying up mega-late on a Friday night was (is) more doable than staying up late on a Sunday night, I suppose. Trade-offs and all that. Then again, I’m by nature a night owl, so my mileage may vary from yours.

But, the time change was not the only news permeating this episode; nope, this was also a Labor Day show! It was Labor Day weekend, which means this was actually airing on Labor Day!

Maybe I really should have waited until the appropriate time to post this? Meh, that’s months away, and my negligible creative juices are flowing right now.

Anyway, because it’s Labor Day, the apparent official food of Labor Day, a watermelon, is blown up in celebration. In the best tradition of the show, it’s a wildly satisfying explosion, and doubly-so for me since I’m apparently the only person in the universe who doesn’t like watermelon.

On a side note, I really like the darker, more-shadowy look of these host segments. Granted, it’s the same set it always was, but it seems much-more shrouded in darkness; looks more Ghoulish, even if The Ghoul himself was always more about comedy than presenting said Ghoulish image. Or something like that. Look, I just like it, okay?

(And no, I don’t think they appear darker because of my reception at the time; as you may be able to tell from the somewhat fuzzy screencaps that a rabbit ear antenna was employed. Actually, this broadcast and subsequent recording look significantly better than what I often got out of 55 around then.)

We’ll get to the rest of the festivities momentarily, but first, 1959’s House on Haunted Hill.

In the realm of public domain horror and sci-fi films, this is one of the biggies. It’s not as ubiquitous as, say, Night of the Living Dead, and it’s certainly not as esteemed either, but nevertheless, House on Haunted Hill is a veritable staple of horror hosted programs such as this.

And why wouldn’t it be? It’s 1950s black and white horror, which is cool by its very nature. It’s a film by William Castle, who specialized in real-life theatrical gimmicks (this time, a plastic skeleton apparently floated throughout the theater while the film played on), and that’s always cool. It’s got a cool title and a cool setting, which makes it look and sound like Halloween personified. And it stars Vincent Price, who was (is) the very definition of cool. Sounds like a can’t miss to me!

And yet, even though this is probably anathema to admit, I’ve never much cared for House on Haunted Hill. Indeed, way back in the late-1990s, an aunt sent a VHS copy to my brother and I, which prompted fond recollections from mom on what a fun flick it was. But upon playback, my reaction was one of severe indifference. And keep in mind, I was around 12-years-old, and therefore what should have been an easy audience for this kind of thing. I just don’t think it’s a very good movie. Even a recent viewing of the Rifftrax Live DVD take on it did little to change my opinion. Vincent Prince (along with Ice Pick from Magnum, P.I.) makes it watchable, but that’s really the best I can say about it.

Though to be frank, I do feel it works better here on The Ghoul than usual. You see, this was a less-than 2 hour episode (1 hour 53 minutes; the rest of the slot was filled out with WBNX featurettes, which were just pop music videos from the period), and it was absolutely saturated with Ghoul segments, which means there wasn’t a whole lot of time left for the movie. As such, there’s the initial set-up, some inter-movie bits, and then the conclusion. In other words, the meat of the movie was all that was left, and as such I found it much more tolerable. (There was an earlier showing of this movie on The Ghoul, from 2000, and I still have that broadcast as well, but personally I find that airing as a whole much less interesting, which is why we’re looking at what we are today.)

Still, even if the movie isn’t exactly one of my favorites, it’s still vintage horror, and it lends itself well to an older-style Ghoul episode, so it all personally ends up working anyway.

The plot? C’mon, you’ve seen this one!

Quick rundown: Vincent Price (above, with what was assuredly the basis for the theatrical gimmick – “Gee, ya think?!”) plays a millionaire playboy, who rents an old mansion from a panicky-guy (Elisha Cook, the aforementioned Ice Pick), and offers a $10,000 cash prize to him and four others if they can stay in the mansion overnight. Also, the mansion is supposedly haunted. Also, the party is being thrown at the request of Price’s wife, a marriage that is shown to be severely strained early on. You can almost figure where this is going from that description alone, can’t you?

Look, the movie is public domain. Everybody has released it. Everybody has aired it. You haven’t seen it? There isn’t much legwork needed to change that!

I don’t have any one definitive reason why I’m not big on House on Haunted Hill. It does a lot of things right, and by all means I should love it. But, there’s something about it that just leaves me cold. It’s not the fairly obvious plot, or the acting, or anything I can actually point to and say “thas why!” It just doesn’t do it for me. Though like I said, I dug this truncated print more than I expected to.

(There were drop-ins for the movie this episode, but most of them were in the form of audio; belches when people drink and so on, though there were funny images of junker cars crashing and whatnot interspersed into the pre-opening-titles sequence of the movie.)

Yeah, I’m not a big fan of House on Haunted Hill, but that doesn’t keep this episode from being a winner. It’s all about the whole, man.

The first skit proper is seen above, though you’d be forgiven for not knowing quite what you’re looking at; hey, everyone was moving around and it was dark. This screencap was about as good as it was going to get! Simply put, The Ghoul and his (I presume) crew raucously dance around for a few minutes. It makes absolutely no sense and that’s why it’s perfect.

You see, you (or at least I) didn’t tune into The Ghoul for just the movie. I mean, sure, yeah, the movie was a big part of it, but again, it was all about the whole. The flicks were often chopped up beyond comprehension (House on Haunted Hill fared better than many), and it seemingly had less to do with editing-for-content and more to do with jamming as many Ghoul segments as possible in. It was about the overall wild, wacky late night experience, and by and large that faded when he moved to Sundays. That’s why I was so disappointed with that previously-linked Poltergeist episode and so pleasantly surprised with this one; this really does feel like a brand new episode to me, which, if I ignore the dated references and commercials, it basically is.

The Ghoul was good at often presenting pretty random bits, and that’s why this real non-sequitur of a segment fits in so well; it absolutely encapsulates the vibes of the program.

Look how nifty this is!

The Ghoul mentions this (well, these) are by “Blues Airmen,” which I assume is this Detroit-based guitar center; makes sense, since The Ghoul was and still is huge in Detroit. But then again, there are bands, or at least a band, by that name, so I don’t know.

Anyway, dig this: They actually created not one but two Ghoul-themed guitars…made from very real toilet seats! The initial model is on the left, and you have no idea how much I love the fact it houses a roll of toilet paper. BUT, for this episode, The Ghoul debuted their newest creation: A new, super-deluxe model, complete with a built-in amp! That’s awesome. Even though he himself admits he can’t sing or play (more on that later), he still spends several minutes fiddling with the beast. Good stuff!

This is fantastic.

Out of nowhere, an old-school piece is presented. Looks like WCLQ TV-61 (that is, 1980s) era Ghoul, in which he intros the final chapter in an animated series of shorts, in which a gigantic (think King Kong or Godzilla) Froggy terrorizes the city. Impervious to other attacks, only The Ghoul can stop him. He does just that in this last installment. How so? Froggy drops dead after The Ghoul shows him one of the movies from his show.

It’s a fantastic animated bit done by Dave Ivey, who (as I recall it) did other work for The Ghoul as well as Wolfman Mac. Does he sound familiar? He should; we saw him at Monsterfestmania! Yep, I myself met the guy behind this short! How cool is that?! And, I can tell you from first-hand experience he is a great guy! Super talented too; he was behind the entirety of this cartoon, from animation to editing to voice, himself!

Another old bit, this time officially as part of the “Vault of Golden Garbage.” I always looked forward to this segment in each show, and it was especially great when old 1970s and 1980s clips were presented, mainly because I wasn’t around for those initially.

This time, a newer bit (Ghoul says it was done about 6 months prior) was shown, though it’s still fun. Here, marionette dolls of a band who-shall-remain-nameless (and faceless) are shown cavorting about, and are duly blown up one-by-one, yet their remains continue to dance even afterwards. I love it!

A follow-up to the new guitar reveal earlier in the show. I imagine it was always welcome when things sent in by fans became the catalyst for entirely new skits.

The premise: The fact that he can’t sing or play hasn’t stopped The Ghoul from going on tour, performing terrible renditions of Ghoul-themed classic rock songs.

I love the insanely high tickets prices, especially the “Gold Circle” seats, which cost a second mortgage! Also, remember when it was the “Gund Arena” and not the Q? Flashback!

Do you recall those “can you hear me now” cellphone commercials? They were all the rage back in the early-2000s, when cellphones were the size of bricks, they needed what was equivalent to a car antenna to pick up any reception at all, and in their extreme primitiveness could only make phonecalls and not a whole lot else (except maybe play rudimentary black & white games of bowling – if you were lucky). Nowadays, I’m pretty sure my phone will make me a sandwich if I press the right buttons. I guess what I’m saying is we’ve come kind of a long way in the nearly 15 years since this aired. Whoda thunk it?!

ANYWAY, this short simple skit (alliteration) is a play on those old commercials, in which Froggy walks around asking the everlasting question of whether he’s cognizant to the person on the other end of the line or not. In doing so, he interrupts a kissing couple and The Ghoul while in traffic. Annnd that’s pretty much all there is to the bit.

Earlier in the show, The Ghoul presented a homemade Brain That Wouldn’t Die diorama sent in by some young fans. Naturally, they asked him to blow it up. (I can relate!) As promised, it was taken care of in spectacularly satisfying fashion later in the program.

I’m not sure what it is that makes us so enamored by destruction such as the act of blowing inanimate objects up; maybe the same thing that makes us oooh and ahhh at 4th of July fireworks. The same ideal was at play back when Letterman was crushin’ stuff or throwing things off a building. Nevertheless, mindless (albeit innocent) destruction is always a good time, and boy, The Ghoul excelled at it.

And so, there’s the show. Most of it anyway. I didn’t bother covering the emails read and a few other bits I couldn’t think up enough to write about. Still, you get the gist.

According to the outro, later that day they’d be celebrating Labor Day at (now long gone) Ghoulardi’s Bar & Grille, a pub whose namesake was the one that put all this Ohio insanity in motion way back in 1963. If you showed up (or mailed in a self-addressed stamped envelope), you could get the swanky, then-new pictures seen in the left screencap above. The Ghoul would even sign ’em for you!

After further reminders that the show would be back on Fridays the next week, that was it; time for The Ghoul to bounce on out of there, as the big bouncy ball in the right screencap above signifies.

Except for the later date and time slot reminders, this really does play out like a classic Friday installment of The Ghoul; from movie to segments to general energetic vibe, this was a pleasant rediscovery of mine. There were even some neat commercials found during it, and with the new television season then-imminent, the recording plays out like a veritable snapshot of fall 2002. TV-wise, at least.

Do Over Promo

As I recall it, that season there was more than one series dedicated to a present-day-whoever finding themselves back in time…but as themselves. I might not be 100% correct on that, but that’s what Do Over was, and though I never watched all that much of it, I do recall it not being too bad. Naturally, it was cancelled after that first year. Actually, a quick online search sez it never even finished its first season.

Anyway, the premise of the show was that a 34-year-old man finds himself in the body of his teenage self, and thus can relive his life to some degree. How or why he was in this predicament, I do not know.

The promo only uses (I assume) clips from the pilot. I seem to recall a gag about the star/son/whatever telling his dad to buy stock in IBM (?), though his dad seems more interested in buying stock in Betamax. I might not be 100% correct on that either. Also, there was a Blues Brothers-centered episode, if I recall correctly. Those may have even been the same episode, I don’t remember.

Ody’s Clothiers & Tailors Ad

ODY!!!

Ody and the clothing store sharing his namesake got a mention here before, in this Ghoul article. He advertised for years on WBNX, and indeed, from maybe the late-1990s to, well, when this aired, he was advertising a going out of business sale.

But here, the ad states he’s put all that on hold to have the “sale of a lifetime.” Special savings are touted, as well as a buy-one-suit-full-price-get-another-half-off deal, which in and of itself is a pretty good special saving.

I’m not sure when Ody finally did close up shop, but he was around long enough for me to get my grade school graduation suit from him. That was spring 2001, and it’s kinda wild (for me) to realize I was just starting sophomore year of high school when this ad (and episode) aired. Also, it’s worth mentioning that Ody himself waited on us during our visit, and he was ridiculously nice. Thus, needless to say, I always enjoy seeing old advertising for his shop.

Family Affair Promo

Yes, there was a remake of Family Affair. And no, your eyes don’t deceive you; that’s Dr. Frank-N-Furter (aka, Tim Curry) up above, starring as the new Mr. French. (Gary Cole was also in it.) Despite what the screencap above might suggest, there was no gritty gunplay in it (that I can recall); that was glop of some sort on Mr. French-N-Furter’s shoulder. It wacky!

For those unaware, the original show involved one “Uncle Bill” taking in his orphaned nieces & nephew, who were further looked after by his blustery British butler (alliteration) Mr. French. Despite not being a fan of that original series, I did actually tune into the remake, and just like Do Over, I didn’t think it was bad at all, though also just like Do Over, it didn’t make it beyond the first season.

I’m almost positive the promo here used only clips from the pilot; I seem to remember there was a cast change with the nephew after the debut, though no one is reading this article anymore (ever?) so what does any of this matter anyway?

Elvis #1s CD & Cassette Ad

I own this album. I like this album. I’m an Elvis fan. But that’s not quite why I’m adding this screencap.

Rather it’s because of where we are music-format-wise nowadays. I mean, can you imagine a time when a CD cost $20, plus shipping? And a cassette tape?! 2002 almost seems too late to be pitching cassettes! And at over $20 after shipping! Thas wild, yo.

Anyway, as you may surmise, it’s a television commercial for said album, in which you could order said album over the phone and receive said album in the mail. Thas convenience, yo. The album was a monumental success, even when compared to how much Elvis stuff sells anyway, and today you can find it brand new for a few mere bucks, and even cheaper used. It’s not quite my favorite Elvis compilation; sticking only to the #1 singles, not unlike that then-recent Beatles comp, left out a lot of a lot of great material, but as an overview of his chart-topping career, it’s still a terrific listen.

(For the record, my top favorite Elvis compilation is one from 1984 titled Rocker. At only 12 tracks and focusing solely on 1950s RCA material, rockers naturally, it’s not even remotely comprehensive. BUT, for pure, unadulterated fifties rockin’, it’s hard to beat. I long ago lost count of how many times I’ve listed to it the whole way through.)

Birds of Prey Promo

When I (re)saw this promo for the series premiere of Birds of Prey, it immediately rang a bell, and had you asked me about it beforehand, I probably would have guessed it’s part of the recent spate of comic-based shows that are so much the rage now.

But, I would have been wrong. Like Do Over and Family Affair, Birds of Prey didn’t last past that first season (was the WB not having a good year, or…?), but unlike Do Over and Family Affair, I never watched Birds of Prey and thus couldn’t tell you much else about it.

So, maybe it’s for the best that this is an uber-brief promo for the premiere; basically, you see some chick (I assume one of the titular characters) kick a guy, while the voiceover fills you in on when and where to watch. So, yeah.

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And there you have it, the recap for The Ghoul’s presentation of House on Haunted Hill, as it aired buried in the late (well, early) hours of September 2, 2002. Had you read through this entire post (and I’m not convinced that you have), you’d know the Ghoul-history-aspects of the broadcast, but truth be told, that’s not really why this struck my fancy enough to write about.

You see, the best episodes of The Ghoul were like a whirlwind; through the combination of a chopped-up (and mocked-up) movie, host segments and general energetic vibe, staying up and watching one of these on a Friday really felt like an experience. Sure, maybe not every skit hit the target, but it was like a, I don’t know, calliope of wackiness, one that had you almost winded once it was all over. Or something like that.

As I’ve mentioned some 9000 times by this point, that aura was either done away with or cut waaaay back when the show was moved to Sundays, but that’s certainly not evident here; this really, truly does feel like what I so avidly stayed up to watch to every Friday night in the late-1990s (and most of 2000). As such, it’s like discovering an entirely new-to-me episode of a huge part of my childhood – which of course is essentially what it is. Cool winnins!

Panasonic Omnivision Hi-Fi VHS VCR PV-1730 (February 26, 1985)

See, I didn’t take April off. Just most of it.

I’ve been a busy Video Hunter this past month, and the sad fact of the matter is I’ve had neither the time nor, to be quite honest, the inclination to put together a ‘big’ article. The reasons for this are several, though I won’t bother to go in to them. Still, I wanted to get something up before April ended, lest y’all think I abandoned the site and, by extension, you. Never let it be said that I don’t care, because I do, I do care!

Anyway, this isn’t going to be a long post, and truth be told, you can consider it more of a stop-gap entry than anything. BUT, that doesn’t mean I don’t like the subject, because I most certainly do. Dig this: From early 1985 (February 26, as per the back), it’s one of Panasonic’s famous Omnivision VHS VCRs, and boy, is this one technologically advanced – well, it was 32 years ago, anyway. Behold the PV-1730! A slick, feature-packed Hi-Fi stereo deck that had the capability to blow your face off – well, it did 32 years ago, anyway.

The best way I can describe this VCR is “heavy duty.” It just feels like a real product, a high-tech, ostensibly end-all be-all addition to the home entertainment center. And that silver casing that flies in the face of the predominantly-black styles of so, so many other VCRs? Looks sharp, man. Is it wrong that I can see this machine being used as decoration in some episode of Miami Vice? Maybe it was.

However, this deck doesn’t quite work correctly, though it mostly does; it powers up, it registers whatever button I slam my paws against, it fast-forwards, it rewinds. The only problem is it doesn’t like to play. Not consistently, anyway. Sometimes I can get it to go and it will run for a period before stopping, but other times it will play for only a moment or two before it takes a powder. I have several ideas as to what the problem is, but it’s not like this is going to be my daily driver; honestly, I picked this machine up simply because of the supreme mid-1980s-ness it exudes. I didn’t even bother taking a screencaps of something playing on it, because it just doesn’t matter.

(So why even bring it home? I love the the era of electronics it so deftly defines, and besides, even if it doesn’t work 100% right now, I always grab these with an eye towards getting them repaired at some unknown point in the future. But really, it all comes to down to the looks and features – even if none of them really mean anything in this day and age. It’s this same mentality that got me my swanky Sylvania VCR.)

Luckily, I got the thing to play for most of my picture-taking session. The display is pretty nice and bright, and while I hate the old school “counter” system, this machine rectifies that with giving the exact minutes and seconds too, which makes it my friend.

You can barely see it, but there’s a sticker stating this was one of Panasonic’s “Tech 4” models, always a welcome sight to yours truly. Indeed, one of the best VCRs I ever found was a 1986 Omnivision “Tech 4” that works flawlessly and may have even more features than this deck. I keep that one on a figurative pedestal because I’m weird.

See that panel at the bottom? It opens up, and oh what it harbors just beneath the hood…

BOOM.

Here’s your station for “One-Touch Recording,” along with the ability to set the OTR timer, as you’d expect. Also, not one but two tracking-control knobs, nifty left and right audio controls, a switch for recording in all three speeds, and Dolby noise reduction.

Now see, I didn’t grow up with, or at least didn’t grow up using, VCRs with such a now-convoluted recording scheme; I came around, thankfully, when that set-up had been reduced to on-screen displays and programmed with the remote. As such, the thought of setting a timer with this system kinda makes my head swim. I could have mastered it, I could still master it, but luckily, I’ll never have to!

Hold on, there’s more to it!

On top of the unit there’s a flip-up panel with controls for picture sharpness, regular TV or cable TV, display options, and so on. Sorry this pic is alternately too bright and too dark; this was about as satisfactory a picture as I was going to get.

Also, V-Lock for SP and SLP? That’s a new one on me. They’re probably found on some of my other VCRs, but if so, I never paid much attention – what exactly is that? “Vertical Lock?” Is that like the “Vertical Hold” on old TVs?

You know what attracted me most to this unit when I first came across it? That “Hi-Fi Audio HD” declaration above. It may not mean anything anymore, but man does that just sound completely top-of-the-line for the time. For the time? Heck, to me that still sounds cool!

Besides the ‘normal’ controls for playing and recording, you’ve also got plenty of audio features, including audio dub, and needless to say, the audio levels meter I always love seeing on these old models.

Along the back are the expected microphone inputs and whatnot and the television hook-ups, but what I really get a kick out of is the “Pay TV” knob; I’m not even sure what it does, but it almost doesn’t matter, because it’s such a neat mid-1980s throwback. I said the same thing about the previously-linked Sylvania VCR, so anyone with the appropriate knowledge wanna fill me in? Hit the comments section!

More inputs/outputs, including handy ports for a camera. The “Editing” plug has me curious, though the declaration of “See Manual” feels like a diss; I don’t have the manual, VCR! Thrift store finds rarely include them, and as such I’m performing a lot of guesswork (such as it is) with some of these features. There’s probably a PDF of the manual online somewhere, but frankly, searching it out is too much work for a stop-gap post that approximately three people are going to read anyway.

So, just where did I get this beast? I honestly couldn’t remember until I dug the machine out and noticed the “$8.00 Y” price written in marker. “Y” stood for “Yellow,” which means I got this from some Village Thrift somewhere. Evidently I never did much with this machine upon getting it home, since I hadn’t even bothered to clean that off! Nope, it had just been sitting in my stack of VCRs, staring at me, day in, day out, wondering why I shun it so. Until today anyway, when I decided I should probably write a token post for April 2017.

So there it is, a Panasonic VHS VCR, loaded with options and still looking darn cool to boot. This was one of those finds I buy based solely on looks, features and “aura.” I grab things like this all the time, and even though I usually never do all that much with them, I love having them, simply because of the era in electronics that they represent.

There. Gap = Stopped!

WJW TV-8’s The Big Chuck & Lil’ John Show – “The War of the Gargantuas” (March 29, 1997)

March 29, 1997. 20 years ago this very day. Let me set the scene: I was not yet even 11-years-old, Easter was the very next day, and as such an Easter Egg-hunt at a nearby park occupied a portion of the afternoon. It was overcast as I recall it, but not rainy. As a young Star Wars nut, I was reveling in the burgeoning new action figure line (at the tail-end of what is probably socially acceptable, age-wise, to still play with toys) and the special edition re-releases of the trilogy, though I only saw the first film in the theater. A trip to the grocery store with my mom and brother following the egg hunt yielded me a Star Wars-themed issue of Cracked, though the whole situation had a damper put on it by a tabloid that promised late-1990s end-of-the-world predictions by Gandhi, which freaked out stupid naive 10-year-old me. Kinda funny that I can look back in nostalgia at something that caused me so much consternation 20 years ago, probably because I’ve got real problems to worry about now.

Anyway, it was against this backdrop that I myself recorded Big Chuck & Lil’ John’s Couch Potato Theater, their Saturday afternoon installment of their popular WJW TV-8 program. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment taping; I wasn’t doing that so much yet. Rather, as a growing fan of giant monster movies, the revelation of The War of the Gargantuas listed in TV Guide that week made this can’t-miss-television for yours truly. I had never heard of the film, but as per the synopsis in TV Guide, it was big ol’ monsters, and it was Japanese, so naturally it was right up my alley. Needless to say, I had to tape it, which also needless to say, is why we’re here now.

Couch Potato Theater wasn’t all that different from Chuck & John’s normative (by their mid/late-1990s standards) Friday night show, except it was generally shorter (typically a strict two hour time slot, as compared to the two and a half, or more, hours of the Friday installment), and with a more eclectic range of features presented. Don’t get me wrong, just like their normal show, the movies shown on Couch Potato Theater ran the gamut of all genres; I mean, the first Big Chuck & Lil’ John I ever taped was a Couch Potato Theater presentation of The Karate Kid, and that was in 1996. But, Couch Potato Theater could also delve into more “traditional Saturday afternoon” fare; Superhost type stuff. That is, vintage short comedies and, of course, old school sci-fi and horror. I certainly didn’t realize it at the time, but this was at the very end of the era when you could catch flicks like this on Saturday afternoons with any kind of regularity (and I’m stretching the term “regularity” here; I direct you back to the aforementioned Karate Kid).

We’ve seen a lot of Big Chuck & Lil’ John on this blog, most recently via a broadcast of Terror of Mechagodzilla that I taped later in 1997. But, except for a brief excursion in this old article and a possible exception with this “Pregame Show” post, Couch Potato Theater has sadly been neglected here, which is a shame, because it was more responsible than anything for making me a BC & LJ fan. (More so a few years after this broadcast, when I began watching old Abbott & Costello episodes on the program and consequently really ‘getting’ Chuck & John; when I taped this, it was pretty much all about the movie.) Seriously, you have no idea how nostalgic that bumper above makes me; it perfectly encapsulates the “lazy Saturday noon movie” vibes of local television at that time.

We’ll get to the Big Chuck & Lil’ John stuff in a moment. But first, the movie.

I was all prepared to say this flick hadn’t yet had an official video release when this aired back in ’97, but I was failing to recall the 1992 Paramount VHS (which, in my defense, I was not aware of until years later). Of course there’s been some official DVD releases in more recent times, but the fact remains that Gargantuas was not all that easily found by the late-1990s. Heck, it doesn’t look like it’s all that easily found now; unless you wanna stream it via Amazon, it’s apparently out-of-print on DVD.

Released in Japan in 1966 (don’t let the copyright date in the screencap above fool you; 1970 was the year of the American theatrical release), The War of the Gargantuas is a Toho kaiju (aka, big huge monster) film, in the vein of Godzilla and the like. That is, lotsa city-crushin’ and whatnot, though this time with American actor Russ Tamblyn starring (and really starring; this wasn’t a cut-and-paste job like Raymond Burr in Godzilla, King of the Monsters). It’s not a particularly well-regarded entry in the genre. Not critically, anyway; Leonard Maltin gave it a BOMB rating, I seem to recall TV Guide only allowing it one star out of a possible four, and even Lil’ John, at one point late in this broadcast, diplomatically states “Not the best movie we’ve ever had on…”

I can’t agree with any of that; I have always loved this movie. I loved it upon first viewing, and I’ve loved it in the years since. In fact, and I know this is anathema to admit, I love it more than the far more highly-regarded Rodan and Mothra. Indeed, I’ve traditionally had a hard time getting into Toho’s non-‘Zilla kaijus, and that isn’t a retroactive repositioning of my stance, either; this goes back to when I was seeing all this stuff for the first time, and thus, an easy audience. (Mothra in particular has just never done anything for me, and the theatrical Rifftrax Live presentation of it some months back did little to change my mind – though Mike, Bill & Kevin were terrific, as usual.)

But The War of the Gargantuas? Something about it has always clicked for me. No, it’s not high art, and even I won’t argue that it’s Toho’s finest hour, but still, it just works. I’m not even sure if I can accurately state why it works for me, it just does. It’s silly, sure, but in a good way; it’s entertaining, and it’s fun. In other words, perfect Saturday afternoon fare, even if magazines were claiming Gandhi said I was a goner at the same time. It’s impossible for me to separate it from my personal memories now, but even years ago, when those would have been less of a nostalgic factor, Gargantuas did (does) everything right in my eyes.

It’s also a sequel of sorts to 1965’s Frankenstein Conquers the World (released in the US in ’66). Much to my regret, I still haven’t seen that movie, but this hasn’t hurt my enjoyment of Gargantuas any, and it shouldn’t yours, either. There’s apparently a vague reference to the first film, but the US version omits any direct references – from how I understand it. Point is, don’t hold off on seeing Gargantuas if you haven’t seen Conquers.

Spawned from the skin cells of the Frankenstein monster in Conquers, Gargantuas (as you may surmise from the title, and if not, at least the screenshot above) details two “humanoid creatures,” the appropriately deemed “Gargantuas.” One, a “Green Gargantua,” is a disagreeable sort; he smashes up boats and causes havoc in general. You know, as you would expect in a movie such as this. This creature comes from the sea, and has an appropriate, seaweed-like appearance. (That’s him to the right above.)

At the same time, there’s also a “Brown Gargantua,” who is much more amiable. This one lives in the mountains, and was actually in the possession of Dr. Paul Stewart (Tamblyn!) and his assistant years ago, before he escaped. (The creature I mean, not Tamblyn.) Because of his upbringing with humans, Brown Gargantua is much more gentle, and provides the heroic role of the movie. (That’s him with his back to you on the left above; aren’t I helpful?)

Eventually the two creatures meet up, and while there is initially a kind of brotherly connection between them, Brown Gargantua soon sees what a complete cad Green Gargantua is, and that’s where our title begins to make sense. With Green Gargantua trying to destroy mankind, and Brown Gargantua trying to protect it, the stage is set for some city-smashin’, and that’s exactly what the film provides. Also, some cool laser effects and an underwater volcano that (SPOILER!!) ends the film on an ambiguous note.

Fans of monster-induced destruction will dig all this. It moves at a decent pace, there’s plenty of action, even a few pathos, and personally, I like that there are no alien-based threats to be found, something that would soon become increasingly commonplace in Toho kaijus. (Though ironically, when Gargantuas was first released in the US in 1970, it was on a double-bill with Godzilla vs. Monster Zero, then called just Monster Zero, which happens to be one of my favorite “bad ol’ aliens” Japanese giant monster flicks. Go figure!)

One final comment on the movie before we get to the Big Chuck & Lil’ John segments: “The Words Get Stuck In My Throat.”

No, that’s not me being cute (and pretty nonsensical, if you think about it) about writer’s block. Rather, it’s the subject of one of the most memorable scenes in the film. In it, Kipp Hamilton (who somehow gets “Special Guest Star” billing in the opening credits) sings a song by that title. I hate to say this, especially since Mrs. Hamilton passed away in 1981, but it’s a pretty terrible song. Nevertheless, she gets to perform it at a nightclub, and upon her finishing, Green Gargantua sneaks up behind her, snatches her up, and then drops her! Guess he didn’t like the song! (Unless it’s in the uncut version, whether Kipp dies from the fall or not is never revealed.)

This scene is often brought up when the subject of The War of the Gargantuas comes about, and it’s solely due to how bad the song is. There’s no arguing that, but you know, there’s something about it that has rung a bell for me ever since I first saw/heard it. Some vague, dusty recollection in the back of my mind that was triggered upon initially hearing it. I hadn’t seen Gargantuas prior, and I highly, highly doubt it stuck in my mind due to some random channel-flippin’ at some unknown point in the past. Nevertheless, something about Kipp’s voice and the lyrics sounds familiar. I can’t explain it, and I sure can’t place it, not then or now. My conclusion is the same today as it was back in 1997: I probably heard a song on Sesame Street or some such program in my early, formative years (which I really wasn’t that far removed from at the time) that subsequently reminded me of it. That’s the best explanation I can come up with, anyway.

And that brings us to the rest of the show.

With only two hours allotted and the need for commercials, never mind the movie, the Big Chuck & Lil’ John segments are somewhat limited here; I’ve been so used to watching old episodes of their Friday night show that I totally forgot how (relatively) scaled back Couch Potato Theater could be. Oh, don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t exactly Sunday-era Ghoul, the guys are still all over this broadcast, there could be no mistaking what you were watching, it’s just that it all moves faster than their ‘regular’ program. Again, perfect for a Saturday afternoon.

Anyway, the first host segment proper included an announcement that I could not be happier to have saved to tape, even though it took me years to realize it: Ghoulardifest! Yep, the very first Ghoulardifest is announced as a “go,” with several guests (including The Ghoul!) already booked. That inaugural Ghoulardifest, as of this broadcast, was going to be one day, August 16, at a Holiday Inn in Independence, OH, though I wasn’t there, so that may have changed/expanded closer to showtime. Nevertheless, it’s wild to look back on the opening salvo of what has become a three-day, annual extravaganza. I, of course, have written about Ghoulardifest some 70,000 (approximate estimate) times by this point; here’s just one of them. (It’s also weird to realize that Ernie “Ghoulardi” Anderson had only passed away the month before when this aired.)

Also, Chuck mispronounces “Gargantuas” as “Gargantuons” and gets bopped in the head by John with a styrofoam hammer.

The skit immediately following that segment feels like something I’ve written about before. Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t; I did only the briefest of searches before deciding it doesn’t really matter. It’s the “Certain Ethnic Alarm Clock,” in which a wife’s clock goes off at 7 AM, giving the expected digital readout. The husband’s (Chuck’s “Stash” character) goes off soon after, and gives a literal digital reading of a ‘normal’ clock. A simple premise, but I’ve always really liked this one.

Another simple one, and very brief, too. A man (John) absorbed in reading his paper as he enters the “Parma Skydiving School” gets a rude surprise – too late! Let the pictures do the talking above. Gotta love aerial footage and green screens!

Trivia time. I’ve mentioned my semi-frustration with these audience trivia-quizzes before, because more often than not I knew the answer, yet was never there in-person to collect the sweet, sweet rewards. This may be the most egregious of that lot: winner had to guess the name of the movie poster presented. It’s The Amazing Colossal Man. Of course it’s The Amazing Colossal Man. What’d they win? A coupon for a free 12-pack of any Pepsi product. That’d be like a day’s supply for me! (Now, not back then.)

(A “Bus Driver” skit, in which Chuck asks passengers to move to the back of a public bus and floors it when they don’t, followed this trivia segment. In a misguided effort to speed things along here, I didn’t take any appropriate screencaps.)

It really feels like I’ve written about this one before, though I like it enough to give a brief go again (plus, I don’t feel like digging through old articles for something that, again, doesn’t matter).

Here, John is a “Lucky Charms” salesman (as in little trinkets, not the cereal), who convinces Chuck to buy one of his products. As it turns out, it was the last in stock, and just as John is packing up to go home and get some more, a safe falls on him!

More trivia. Winner this time got a $20 comic shop gift certificate. The poster art is of course Attack of the 50 Foot Woman. Too easy! Not fair!!

A genuine classic skit, and one of my favorites. If *I* were in charge of a top-however many skits compilation, I’m pretty sure this would make the final cut.

John plays the much-verbally-abused husband of Carmella (I can’t remember her last name), working six and a half days a week, tired, and just wanting to take a load-off after a long day by watching some TV. I think we can all relate. This, of course, is not good enough for the wife, who endlessly berates him over the length of time it’s been since they’ve been out to eat, gone dancing, and had her hair done. She even throws in a variation on the old “mother warned me about you” line.

The tide of nagging is momentarily stemmed when John announces they’re playing “their song” on TV – only to then turn up the volume and reveal that’s it the old “Hefty Hefty Hefty – Wimpy, Wimpy Wimpy” commercial jingle! This, naturally, results in him being chased around the kitchen by his now really mad wife!

I sometimes wonder what theoretically happened after these skits faded out. Did they make up? Was John able to calm her? Or was the homicide squad eventually called in? I’m probably thinking too much about this.

You can’t say Chuck & John weren’t masters of the green screen.

Here, Chuck’s Stash character is a balloon salesman, and John plays a little kid (he usually did), who eagerly wants one specific balloon. He eventually gets it, only to reveal that it’s a string attached Stash’s head, which floats away with John as he leaves. Stash seems apprehensive with the situation.

Did this effectively end Stash’s life? Was his head eventually returned to his body? Or did both entities continue, somehow, living independent of each other? I’m probably thinking too much about this.

Some brief announcements before heading into another skit. That next Saturday night, Chuck & John would be appearing at a local sports bar, and the next Sunday afternoon they’d be at a Parma Heights library benefit. BC & LJ did (do) so many of these types of appearances, they almost have to all blend together for them by now, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun seeing the various places they’d be back in the day.

The kind of topical (though it was almost certainly several years old by then anyway) skit that still holds up.

John and another “gringo” find themselves on the execution line of a Hispanic country of some sort, and are given a last request. The unnamed “gringo” (who is given a good ol’ boy appearance) just wants to hear his favorite song one last time. What is it? “Achy Breaky Heart.”

John’s last request? They shoot him first! It’s a funny moment, made all the better by the knowing nod of the dictator (?) in charge of the execution.

A brief skit that’s actually more clever than I initially gave it credit for.

Chuck is a pharmacist who finds himself being held up by an obviously old woman with a bag over her head (Mary Allen, who was great in everything). She doesn’t want money; she wants Retin-A! Retin-A is a skin-revitalizing treatment, which makes the whole bag-on-head thing not only a disguise, but a commentary on aging. Funny!

Annnnd, that finished the show up. Next week on Couch Potato Theater? Eddie & The Cruisers! Had I been the age I am now back then, I’d have definitely taped that one, too. (Plus, sensationalist tabloids in the check-out line at the grocery store wouldn’t have been cause for concern, because my brain eventually formed enough to realize they’re fake). The show next Friday night was Lord of the Flies, which really isn’t my cup of tea (enjoyed the book, though). John’s loud and enthusiastic “BYEE!” he always used and a shot of the Boy Scout attendance-heavy audience closes the episode out.

(Oddly enough, I didn’t catch any references to Easter being the next day, and there sure weren’t any especially-Easter-ish skits, but I looked it up, it’s true.)

You know, after my latest revisit of this recording, it’s amazing how much of it is ingrained in my memory. Okay, yeah, not a big surprise considering I grew up with this tape, but there really are several moments burnt into my consciousness that I, quite honestly, didn’t expect. I mean, sure, “The Words Get Stuck In My Throat” and other parts of the movie itself, definitely, but also quite a bit of the show as a whole; skits, bits of dialog, the trivia, stuff like that.

Usually at this point, I would look at interesting commercials that aired during this broadcast. I’m going to skip that portion this time around; there weren’t really any particularly notable ones (unless you consider a promo for The Gladys Knight Show and an ad for Handi-Snacks notable, and I don’t). But they really aren’t important here. Nope, this subject is one that’s heavily, heavily tied to my personal memories; as such, it may be hard for some readers to ‘get it,’ but I trust everyone can relate in some way to what I mean. In that regard, there was the program itself; my first exposure to what has become a personal favorite Toho movie of mine, and of course there’s the Big Chuck & Lil’ John material, which I only came to appreciate more and more as time went by.

But beyond all that, it’s where this falls in my lifetime. There’s an “aura” about this recording that will (probably) be all but impossible for someone else to accurately understand, but is something that I can never extricate from the proceedings. The events of that day, my age, my interests, all things I look back on now with a wistful fondness. I think it goes back to that weird tabloid scare I’ve referenced several times; a silly fear now, of course, but it points to an innocent naivete that was, quite frankly, probably preferable to the worldly cynicism I often exhibit nowadays.

And that, my friends, is the magic of videotape technology in a nutshell right there. Not just the capturing of a program to view again and again in the future, but also the capturing of a specific time and place, which can also be relived once more. Your childhood can come back alive, if even for only 2 hours.

Alpha Video’s Sons of Kong DVD Set (2005) Review

Look, y’all know I loves me some King Kong, and with a brand new Kong epic hitting US theaters today (Kong: Skull Island, for the three of you that have apparently been holed-up in that sad, makeshift tree fort in your backyard for who-knows-how-long), what say we take a look at an artifact from the last time a brand new Kong epic hit US theaters? That was Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake, for the six of you whose accumulative memory has failed the past 12 years.

I saw the 2005 remake in theaters, and I liked it quite a bit. Super long, yes, but it was a film that, I feel, did justice to the 1933 original in a way that the 1976 remake did not. (The jury is still out on 1998’s animated The Mighty Kong, mainly because I haven’t seen it.) It wasn’t better than the ’33 original, but then, few movies are. Still, as far as remakes go, 2005’s King Kong was a winner, in my opinion.

And beyond the film itself, there was the merchandising. It wasn’t a little either; it was a lot. Sure, there was the officially-sanctioned stuff, but like any good blockbuster, companies the world over came out to get in on the action. It happened with 1998’s Godzilla remake (we got a lot of cool ‘stuff’ from that flick, including plenty of fresh new video releases of old Godzilla outings), and needless to say, it happened with Kong ’05, too. I haven’t been paying much attention, but I imagine it has happened, or will happen, with Kong ’17, as well.

Longtime readers will know that some of my favorite DVDs aren’t the high-end ones accompanied by a monster-sized (see what I did there???) promotional-blitz, but rather, the budget issues. That is, the single-disc or compilation sets that find a life in bargain bins for $1, $5, $10, whatever, and happily stay there for the duration. Typically consisting solely of public domain fare, these DVDs may not have the panache of major label issues, but where charm is concerned, baby, it’s off the charts. Well, sometimes, anyway.

Back in 2014, we looked at a budget Gamera DVD set that found a shelflife-spotlight during all the hoopla that was the ’14 adaptation of Godzilla, and this past July, I babbled incessantly about my love of Pop Flix’s 8-movie Bela Lugosi set. And now, I’ve got another DVD collection that reaches the upper-echelon of my personal “budget favorites,” and boy is it a doozy: Alpha Video’s 2005 release of Sons of Kong, a 10-movie collection that does proper service to the big legendary ape, despite not actually featuring the big legendary ape. Rest assured, if you were to capitalize on Peter Jackson’s King Kong via old, ape-themed movies, this is the way to do it.

That’s it above, before I wrestled it from its shrinkwrap prison. It’s a double-wide DVD case, housed in cardboard slipcase, featuring some impressively cool, lightning-tinged artwork and a 3-D gimmick so awesome that it automatically ranks this set above 99.9% other budget compilations. (Heck, it automatically ranks it above most “big time” DVDs, too.) Frankly, I can’t believe it took me the better part of 12 years to pick this up, because based on looks alone, this is quite obviously a must-have. Hey, better late than never, and trust me, you’ll need this in your life too, if you haven’t done so already. Read on!

Alpha Video put out some neat stuff in the VHS years, but man, they’ve been positively amazing in the DVD era. As I described in a review this past September, they’ve been responsible for issuing to the general public (on legit factory-pressed silver discs, no less!) a ton of movies that in previous years were pretty much the sole domain of specialty video dealers – if they were available at all. I am constantly amazed to discover what they’ve put out on DVD, and at terrific prices to boot!

In this particular set, there are 10 ape-related films, and while half of them are veritable staples of the public domain, the other half are not as commonly found. They’re all welcome though, and to have them in one concise, Kong-themed package, that’s just awesome. Take a look at that line-up above, though we will go disc-by-disc in just a bit. Put on the brakes amigo, we’ll get there.

On a semi-related note, Alpha gets my everlasting thanks for not including King of Kong Island. I hate that movie; it’s not fun-bad, it’s just bad, and since it’s public domain, it’s pretty much everywhere. I initially thought it was a lock for a set like this, though much to my delight, it was excluded. Instead, the featured films span from the 1930s to the 1950s, some horror-themed, some jungle-themed, some both. Bela Lugosi shows up in three of them, Boris Karloff in one, Dixie from Emergency! is here, Buster Crabbe makes an appearance, and Lon Chaney Jr. and Ironside are also in attendance. When it comes to star-power, Alpha nailed this one.

“Hey, where’s King Kong, man?”

King Kong is not a public domain film, and thus the chances of it showing up on a set like this are effectively less than nil. The title of the set links it to Kong, or at least the idea of Kong, but it doesn’t state Kong himself will be there. Dig?

“So no Son of Kong either, then?”

No, that’s also not public domain. I can see some confusion there, as King Kong‘s sequel was, you know, titled Son of Kong, but this is the Sons of Kong, with the “sons” obviously being in a figurative sense.

I only mention all this because there’s usually that one person that asks “where’s so and so?” with sets like these; not everyone gets the budget, public domain thing, I know. At any rate, Alpha did a great job of definitively playing into the hype of Kong ’05 without making false promises. As a tie-in, you couldn’t ask for a cooler piece! And speaking of cool…

LOOK AT THAT!

The cardboard slipcase and the DVD case itself share the same artwork, but the slipcase features one of, maybe even the, coolest gimmicks I’ve ever seen in a DVD set of this nature: the cover opens up to reveal a 3-D pop-up image of the artwork! That’s awesome. You just don’t see companies go that extra-mile with compilation sets like this very often; it really does give the whole package a mighty, Kong-ish vibe! Sure, there was that sticker on the shrinkwrap (scroll back up and see!) that promised this feature, but I had no idea how neat it would be until I saw it for myself!

The DVD case itself is a sturdy, double-wide deal, with disc one housed on the left, and discs two and three overlapping each other on the right. Also included is a warranty card of some sort and a big thick catalog of other appropriate Alpha Video titles that seriously gave me flashbacks of the old Sinister Cinema catalogs I used to thumb through endlessly.

I really like that Alpha went with single-sided DVDs; with movies like these, the dreaded double-siders are often the case. Even though two of the discs feature three per, and one has four, and thus some compression is probably a danger, I still prefer this method to double-sided discs. I hate double-sided discs. Though not as much as King of Kong Island.

Also, the disc fronts are eye-catching, with nice colorful artwork. They look good!

Each disc kicks off with a cool menu featuring the ape artwork from the cover, tabs for the movies themselves, and a tab for Alpha’s movie catalog. It’s a simple, but attractive, menu.

As you’d expect of a set like this, the sound and picture quality varies from film to film, but all are watchable, and some are surprisingly sharp. Alpha does have their I.D. ‘bug’ somewhere on-screen for the start of each feature, but that’s not a big deal; when you’re dealing with public domain movies, you don’t need some clown copyin’ your material scot free and all willy nilly, after all.

See, Mantan Moreland. Did you think I was lying? I wasn’t.

DISC ONE: Unfortunately, this is the disc I’m least familiar with, and I haven’t had time to fully digest it as of yet. It’s apparently the most “jungle-y” of the set, however, with White Pongo, The Savage Girl, and Law of the Jungle being the three features. White Pongo, as you may surmise, is about a mythical “white gorilla” (not the last time that idea will be found in the collection), The Savage Girl is basically “female Tarzan,” and Law of the Jungle is a wartime comedy featuring Mantan Moreland (look to the right if you don’t believe me), so you just know it’s full of wildly outdated humor.

Nabonga = Gorilla. Update your diaries accordingly.

DISC TWO: Nabonga, The White Gorilla, The Gorilla, and Bride of the Gorilla are the four features of the second disc. I’d call it the most “gorilla-y” of the set, but that’s only because I just had to type the word “gorilla” 9000 times while listing the contents; I don’t think it’s really any more gorilla-y than the rest of the collection. Nabonga, a word which evidently translates to “gorilla” (as per the title screen; left), features Buster Crabbe, Ray “Crash” Corrigan, and, would you believe it, singer and Emergency! star Julie London! Cool winnins! As for The White Gorilla, somewhere in the back of my cluttered mind I recall it being an infamously bad movie, and thus one that I need to spend some actual time with here. The Gorilla is a Ritz Brothers comedy featuring Bela Lugosi that, frankly, I’ve just never been that fond of. But Bride of the Gorilla (with Lon Chaney Jr. and Raymond Burr), I go way back with that one; that was the movie shown when The Ghoul blew up my Fantasy Mission Force tape! It’s sort of a play on the werewolf theme, but, you know, with an ape. And Perry Mason.

Not exactly Bela’s most esteemed work, but it IS fun…

DISC THREE: The third and final disc is my favorite; there’s only three movies on it, but it’s a powerhouse three. Relatively speaking, anyway. It kicks off with the poverty row Boris Karloff opus The Ape, a movie I also go way back with. I taped it off AMC (back when AMC showed these kinds of movies!) many, many years ago. It wasn’t quite what I was expecting (I think I was hoping for more of a King Kong knock-off, instead of the killer-ape-who-Karloff-makes-a-suit-out-of horror film), and thus I didn’t really dig it, though it has grown on me over the years, largely due to Karloff. After that, there’s Lugosi’s The Ape Man (right), which you know is a flick I love, as per my previously-linked Lugosi DVD set review. And to finish the collection off, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, also one I looked at in that previous review. It’s a painfully-stupid-but-entertaining-nevertheless horror/comedy featuring a fake Martin & Lewis team, with an ending so dumb you’ll be tempted to sit right down and sob.

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There it be, Alpha Video’s Sons of Kong DVD collection: 3-D slipcase, stylin’ double-wide DVD case, and painfully cool artwork. A proud new addition to my collection! What a neat set! Simply put, you just don’t see budget collections of public domain material presented as regally as this one; Alpha totally went above and beyond, and they absolutely knocked it out of the park. Even if the movies themselves are only sporadically “Kong-like,” the treatment given to them here feels appropriately larger-than-life. There were a lot of tie-ins to the 2005 remake of King Kong, but as far as I’m concerned, Alpha was one of the closest in doing justice to the Kong mythos with this collection – and the real Kong doesn’t even show up on it! That Alpha could pull this off is something to be celebrated. Now, nearly 12 years after it was first released and with a new Kong movie now upon us, it still feels special, and somehow, despite the material presented, fresh.

I heartily recommend Alpha Video’s Sons of Kong, and should you want your own copy (and you really should), they can still be had brand new (and currently very, very cheap) on Amazon. Get yours here and now!

Beefin’ Up My Sega Genesis!

“WELCOME TO THE NEXT LEVEL.”

So said the ads of the 1990s, and here, now, some 22 years or so after I should have gotten all that I could out of the system, I feel I have finally, finally reached that mythical “next level.” Bear with me for the duration of this post gang, because I’m about to incoherently babble about the quest and ultimate fulfillment of getting all that I possibly could out of my trusty Sega.

Now, you have no idea how much I love the Sega Genesis (known as the Sega Megadrive everywhere but in the US; it’ll always be a Genesis to me, deal with it bucky). Indeed, in the realm of my personal favorite video game consoles, the Genny is second only to the Nintendo Entertainment System; no two other systems hold quite such an esteemed place in this heart of mine, dubious honor that may be. In fact, the Genesis has the distinction of being the first console I ever purchased new with my own money, at the long-gone and much-missed Sun Electronics store that once resided a short distance from me. Ah, the 1990s!

Even though the Genesis alone is more than enough to rank among my top favorite systems, the fact that it can be expanded, and expanded mightily, only adds to the personal appeal. So then, just how do you go about beefin’ the console to maximum capacity? What more could possibly be added to what is generally considered one of the greatest video game systems of all-time? Well, by doing what so many gamers back in the 1990s did (or so Sega hoped), and what so many gamers continue to do (or so I hope): I’ve attached the Sega CD and Sega 32x add-ons to my console, that’s what I did! Look up above if you don’t believe me!

“y u doin this bro?”

It’s a question classic gamers probably wouldn’t ask, even though the CD and 32x add-ons, or more specifically their libraries, are often considered, well, kinda negligible. The gaming world at large, I’m not sure they’d get it, but since I give 0 about the current generation of consoles, and never stopped loving the systems I grew up with besides, this just feels right. Plus, this fits in to the current wave of 1990s nostalgia I’ve been riding as of late; even though I didn’t own these add-ons new back in the day, I still fully expect to continuously check my watch to make sure Boy Meets World hasn’t started yet whilst playing this big hulking mound of plastic.

“Wuts a cd 32x bro?”

As you may surmise, the Sega CD was an attachment that allowed for bigger, more powerful games and CD-quality soundtracks via, say it with me, compact discs. The 32x was a cartridge-based attachment that, as you also may surmise, gave the Genesis 32-bit capabilities and thus even bigger, more powerful games. Theoretically, anyway; general consensus is that neither attachment lived up to their potential on a regular basis, and I’m not sure I’d have been happy with them had I paid full price back in the day. Now though? There’s enough good stuff to make me feel I got my money’s worth – especially since I got ’em on the cheap years ago.

I had only limited experience with the add-ons prior; my cousin had both, and I recall once playing Sewer Shark on the CD and Star Wars Arcade on the 32x at his house, way back in 1995 or so. For all intents and purposes however, getting these attached to my Genesis was my first real experience with them, and therein lies my tale. So read on! (And please ignore some of the dust I neglected to clean before snapping photos; frankly, you’re lucky I even gave a cursory soft-cloth wipe-down before taking pictures.)

Anyone reading almost undoubtedly has to know what a Sega Genesis looks like. For the .01% of you that don’t, up above is a model 1 Sega Genesis – bare, naked, unbeefed. This isn’t the Sega that I regularly use, and thus isn’t quite the subject of this post. Rather, this is just a spare I’ve wound up with. What, you thought I was gonna unplug all of the attachments just to get a photo of my “playing” Sega without the, as you would say, accoutrements? Think again, chief.

Actually, the system above was the console that the CD and 32x attachments originally came with. I picked the whole set up cheap at a thrift store in late-2010 – and then proceeded to do nothing with any of it. Despite the included mess of cords, I still didn’t think I had all of the necessary attachments, and it promptly became part of the messy mosaic of boxes that made (make) up my increasingly cluttered basement. I never regretted the purchase, because hey, most of the stuff was there, and the price was definitely right (especially compared to the climbing 16-bit prices nowadays), but it wasn’t until recent months that I decided to do something with the lot.

Y’see, the Genesis that I normally use, another model 1 which I picked up years ago at a rummage sale (to the best of my recollection), I’ve kept hooked up as my “playing” unit for quite some time. The room where I have it includes a big, beautiful, vintage Sony Trinitron CRT TV, with built-in speakers on its sides and a stand that also serves as another speaker. It’s my “go-to” classic gaming TV, and for awhile, I had a myriad of consoles daisy chained to it. Eventually I decided to declutter, and instituted a personal “only one system at a time!” rule for the TV, with the beater Genesis getting the nod. That’s the place it has held ever since, and luckily, my pretentious little rule doesn’t preclude add-ons, since it’s still technically only one console. This is important stuff, so pay attention.

I went with the Genesis as my console of normative choice simply because I have stacks and stacks of games (a library that includes more than a few all-time favorites), I’ve got plenty of spare consoles should this one die (yeah, like these things won’t outlive us), and there’s a lot of bases covered by it; legit 16-bit gaming, of course, but also 8-bit via the Sega Master System converter (the SMS is a system I absolutely adore and thus this aspect was a huge factor in my decision), plus, needless to say, now CD and 32x games are in the mix, too. Sega was the king of add-ons in the 1990s, and while that ultimately had a large part in crippling their future (more on that momentarily), for me right now, I love the options at my disposal.

So, as I steadily decided to expand my “playing” Genesis, I simply removed from that thrift store buy what I wanted to use on my ‘good’ console. I initially didn’t intend on using all of it, which I’ll explain in a bit.

When I bought my first Genesis new way back when, it was a model 2; a smaller, sleeker, more streamlined beast. I loved it, and still have it of course, but even then I liked the look of the first model more. There are certain positives and negatives regarding both variations, though the model 1 is easily my preferred choice – especially since the the SMS converter won’t fit on a model 2!

Though not really the subject of this post, I mentioned that whole model 1/model 2 thing just now because the Master System adapter, the Power Base Converter, really did play a part when I was thinkin’ ’bout beefin.’

Via this converter, my SMS library has probably gotten just as much playtime as my Genesis games have. Now, I have an actual SMS, but again, that would require two consoles being out, which would start me on the slippery slope towards cluttering up mah space again. The Power Base Converter does pretty much everything a ‘real’ SMS can do (no built-in game, though), and aside from a few (but just a few) games not liking a Genesis controller (gotta use a legit SMS pad for Bomber Raid, dawg), I have no issues with it. Indeed, I love the lil’ feller, and it fills me with a burning rage that it kinda flies under the radar when the subject of Genesis add-ons are brought up at sophisticated dinner parties and whatnot.

So what was my concern regarding the converter? From how I understand it, the adapter basically acts as a pass-through, and all of the stuff to make an SMS game ‘go’ is already in the Genesis. However, when you attach a 32x, which allows you to play regular Genesis games through it (lest you have to un-hook & re-hook the thing every time the 16-bit fancy strikes you), I guess it somehow disables the whatever that allows the Power Base Converter to function. This hurts me deep, even if plugging the converter into the 32x would make the set-up the ugliest monstrosity in console history. The Genny ain’t exactly winning any awards in that area when all beefed up like this, anyway.

Simply put, taking the Power Base Converter out of the equation was not an option. This was non-negotiable. Luckily, I worked out a solution that, while still requiring some unplugging and whatnot, at least keeps my SMS-capabilities on the table; I will not bar myself from readily-accessible Rambo: First Blood Part II! (The SMS game I mean, not the movie – though I won’t bar myself from the flick, either.)

What got this whole “Ah wanna upgrade mah Sega” thing started was actually the CD. Not Sega’s CD attachment, mind you, but rather the Turbografx-16’s. Or rather, the later TurboDuo combo console. I had been reflecting on my good fortune in obtaining the Duo several years back (it was still pretty expensive, but not “hold your head in your hands and weep bitterly” expensive like it is now), when I realized, hey, I play my Genesis much more than anything right now, so why not take the Sega CD plunge and expand a bit?

My first thought was to pick up a model 1 Sega CD, which was a big hulking unit with a motorized disc tray, and which sat directly beneath the Genesis. I had a chance to pick one of those up (with yet another Genesis) several years back too, at a decent-compared-to-now price, but unlike my TurboDuo, I failed to use my bean and decided against it. Mistake.

In all honestly, at first I didn’t even think of using the model 2 Sega CD that I already had and was currently languishing somewhere in my basement. Eventually, the gears started turning in my noodle, I dug the thing out, and I went to figure out how I could make it “go.” Initially, I only intended it as a placeholder until I could find a halfway-reasonable model 1 CD, and while I won’t say that option is completely off the table, I’d have to come across an original unit in-person and for a great price to make me drop some of my increasingly limited dough on it.

The model 1 Sega CD was first released in the US in 1992, and a year or so later, the redesigned model 2 CD came. Primarily intended for use with the Genesis model 2, the second iteration of the Sega CD used a pop-up disc tray lid and sat next to the Genesis. Luckily for me, this revised Sega CD works just fine with the model 1 Genesis. (Which makes sense, since it came with one when I first brought it home!)

As I said before, when I originally bought my Genesis/CD/32x set-up from the thrift store, I didn’t think I had all the right cables and whatnot. Just looking at the back of this Sega CD, the numerous ports had me confused. Sure, the power supply is self-explanatory (and luckily mine came with one; same as a model 1 Genesis power supply), but the rest? Separate AV jacks? “Mixing?” What have I gotten into?! No wonder I threw all this stuff in a box and let it sit for almost 7 years!

Fortunately, a quick look online revealed that I did indeed have the bare minimum to get this thing running. All I had to do? Connect it to the Genesis’ expansion port, plug the power supply in, and bingo! The Genesis handled the rest! Cool winnins! (There are some metal RF shielding plates that came with the CD, which you screw in the bottom of the Genesis to both better prevent RF interference and to attach it more securely to the CD. I had these and did indeed attach them, but they’re not absolutely necessary.)

The Sega CD had garnered a decently-sized library before being discontinued in 1996, though oddly enough, as soon as I got mine hooked up, I was sort of at a loss as to what I was really going to go after (barring one exception). The fact my player had been sitting around my basement for nearly 7 years had me wondering if the thing even still worked. A quick trip to a nearby thrift shop yielded me a cheap copy of Bill Walsh College Football, purchased solely for testing purposes (I’m not a college football fan, and frankly, I’m not huge on 16-bit football games in general). Maybe not the best demonstration of the CD’s power, but it told me that my Sega CD was indeed operational.

My first real Sega CD game, as far as one I wanted goes, was Sol-Feace, a terrific horizontal shooter that was actually a pack-in with the original release of the Sega CD. While maybe not a stellar showcase of the CD’s abilities (except for the soundtrack, which I dig), it’s still a blast, and saves me the trouble of tracking down the Genesis cartridge port (titled Sol-Deace; Phil Moore always had fun saying that title on Nick Arcade).

After that was the CD port of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Unlike many Sega CD games, which were just enhanced versions of Genesis games, Dracula is actually a totally different game from the ‘regular’ edition. Featuring actual clips from the movie, digitized characters, and backgrounds that rotate as you pass through them (think Fleischer Popeye), it’s an impressive title for 1993, and unlike the last two games, a real showcase of what the Sega CD can do. Okay, technically it’s a mediocre, single-plane Beat-‘Em-Up, but it looks so neat that I wound up being fond of it nevertheless.

But actually, it was Final Fight CD, which you’re looking at live and in action above (in a shot crummily taken of it playing on my TV because I don’t emulate; it looks better in real life, trust me!), that was the main driving force behind getting me to hook up the CD. Y’see, I’m a Beat’ Em Up junkie; it’s quite possibly my favorite genre of video games. Heck, I pretty much bought the TurboDuo just so I could play the Japan-exclusive port of Double Dragon II. So yeah, Final Fight CD might as well be considered my personal “killer app” here. My conclusion? It’s a very good port, infinitely superior to the SNES version, and with a great, kickin’ soundtrack. My only real issue with the game is the same issue I take with all Beat-‘Em-Ups of its ilk: It tends to be cheap. The difficulty doesn’t so much ramp as it sucker punches you. I’m always up for a challenge, but I find that aspect of the game severely irritating. As far as the Genesis goes, I find both Streets of Rage and Streets of Rage 2 to be superior fighters.

Still, despite some warts, Final Fight CD is my favorite title thus far on the Sega CD. Yes, it was worth hooking the add-on up for!

Currently on the want list: Even though I’ve never been huge on the normal Genesis edition (I’m firmly in the Super Nintendo camp when it comes to games based on the movie), I do intend on picking up the expanded version of Batman Returns. Also in the same vein, and because I’m, as previously stated, a Beat ‘Em Up junkie, the expanded Sega CD port of Cliffhanger is one I’d like to add to the library. Star Wars: Rebel Assault, the PC version of which I grew up with, is a title I’d really like to get, even though intellectually I know it was never a very good game, even back then. Also, Afterburner III, because I do loves me some Afterburner. The Sega CD library is littered with full-motion video titles (a real relic of the ’90s!), and while the thought of most of them make my eyes glaze over, obtaining one or both Mad Dog McCree titles is appealing, simply because, like Rebel Assault, I grew up with with Mad Dog II on the PC. (Unlike Rebel Assault though, I always found Mad Dog II pretty fun.) And of course, I needs me some Sonic CD, too!

Finally, and for purely cosmetic reasons, I bought the extender piece that attaches to the far-left bottom of the Genesis and slides into the CD base. It doesn’t do anything but make the whole set-up look better; otherwise, the edge of the model 1 Genesis hangs off the side of the model 2 CD. Still plays fine, but looks ugly. Hence, extender piece. I wugs u extendo peece.

The more I think about it, the more I think that a particularly appealing thing about the Sega CD is that it’s such an early-1990s throwback, and not just in release date, either. Back then, CD was this new, wondrous format; just hearing “CD-ROM” today reminds me of getting the latest Sierra adventure games for the PC on CD – 3.5 floppies seemed so outdated after that! To get that same experience on a console, it had to be pretty cool for cutting-edge gamers of the time, and it’s still fun to revel in now, even if the revolutionary aspects have, of course, dimmed in the years since.

Ah, and that brings us to the the Sega 32x. The infamous Sega 32x. An attachment conceived to give the Genesis 32-bit capabilities, extend the life of the console, and bridge the gap between the Genesis and looming Sega Saturn, the 32x could very well be (and has been) considered the opening salvo in Sega’s demise as a console-maker. The add-on was a notorious flop, with only about 40 games released for it, and it was only on the market for 2 years or so. Even worse, it destroyed much confidence in Sega as a company, and coupled with some unwise decisions and relative commercial failure of the Sega Saturn (commercial failure, mind you, because it certainly has a huge cult following), Sega could never quite get back on track, even when they should have with the terrific Sega Dreamcast.

‘Course, in my case, I got the 32x so many years after all that, that there were only two real factors in deciding whether I should extricate it from its resting place and hook it up to my ‘real’ Genesis: 1) Were there enough games to even make it worth the effort? And, 2) what about my Power Case Converter? As I said before, that thing apparently won’t run whilst plugged in to the 32x (however, and also as I said before, you can run regular Genesis cartridges through it no problem, except for Virtua Racing, which the 32x has its own port of anyway). Like I mentioned earlier, rendering the Power Base Converter useless was non-negotiable in my eyes. I eventually found a not-perfect-but-livable solution, which I’ll explain in a bit.

(Like the Sega CD, the 32x has metal plates you’re supposed to install inside the Genesis cartridge slot, and while I have them, you don’t absolutely need them – also just like the Sega CD. This is a good thing, because they would hamper my just-mentioned SMS-solution, and besides, I don’t know where I put the things anyway.)

You know, even though there are far fewer games in the 32x library than there is the CD, there were a handful titles that I wanted to play more than any other, save Final Fight CD. Namely, Star Wars Arcade, Doom, and Virtua Fighter.

Star Wars Arcade was a launch title for the 32x in 1994. Based on the 1993 arcade game (as opposed to the 1983 vector Atari arcade game), it’s a very good space-shooter, and an excellent demonstration of the 32x’s polygon abilities. Plus, it was the one 32x game I played back in the day. Still, I haven’t spent a ton of time with this one yet.

Doom, on the other hand, has gotten far more playtime than I expected. I heard conflicting stories about this port, from it being good to it being, uh, not. And you know, even though the music is weak, the framerate sometimes stutters, there are levels missing, and some save states are desperately needed, for a time I could not get enough of this game! *I* think it’s a good port, even if, technically it’s not a great one. Plus, while it may be anathema to admit this, I’ve always preferred Wolfenstein 3D to Doom; since there was no port of the former on the 32x, the latter wins by default.

But as far as 32x favorites go, I think I have to give the edge to Virtua Fighter (above, again in a sad, off-the-TV shot), a terrific port of the revolutionary 1993 arcade game. Using polygonal models, it may not look like much now, but it’s a fantastic demonstration of just what the 32x could do when harnessed properly. It even compares quite well to the later Sega Saturn port! There was a time when I was big into the 3D one-on-one fighters, so this version of Virtua Fighter really does take me right back. Plus, I always wished that Sega had made a big beefed up Genesis port using the same technology they did for Virtua Racing; it never happened (though an okay, albeit 2D, port of Virtua Fighter 2 did show up late in the Genesis lifecycle), so this cart satisfies that ‘hunger’ somewhat.

Currently on the want list: Mortal Kombat II received a 32x port that’s seemingly pretty good, which is fortunate, since I love the regular Genesis version. Furthermore, there are well-regarded ports of Afterburner and Space Harrier that I definitely want. Knuckles Chaotix seems like an interesting Sonic spin-off, and the masochist in me wants to try Motocross Championship, even though it’s supposedly one of the worst things ever – and Youtube vids seem to bear that out. Also, I wouldn’t say no to Spider-Man: Web of Fire, should I find it cheap at a yard sale (yeah, right). Yes, there are fewer personal “wanted” games for the 32x than there are for the CD, but truth be told, the ones I want for the 32x I want more. Go figure!

As you may well imagine, running all of this results in a real mess of wires, not to mention three separate power adapters. Look up above if y’all don’t believe me! And, the 32x was a real pain to get hooked up satisfactorily. You can’t just “plug it in” like the Sega CD. I didn’t think I had all the necessary cables here either, though it turns out I was only missing one – the most important one (figures). Online searches on what exactly I needed wound up making my head swim, especially when they got into what was needed to get true stereo sound out of a 32x plugged into a model 1 Genesis (which only outputs mono sound). I’m usually pretty good at figuring these things out myself, but here, after numerous tries, I kept finding myself hopelessly confused.

So, here’s what you need for the 32x:

1 – A power adapter, of course. The 32x uses the same style as the Genesis model 2. Mine came with one, and even if it hadn’t, they’re easily found.

2 – Genesis 2-style AV or RF cables. Mine came with an RF box, which was fine with me until I realized I was gonna need AVs not only for better picture (remember, I wasn’t using the shielding plates, which did result in some irritating static), but also for a very specific reason I’m coming to. A quick trip to eBay yielded me some (cheap) AVs, though I soon learned the hard way that normal Genesis 2 stereo AV cables don’t work; you get picture but no sound with them plugged into the TVs AV ports. Nope, here you gotta have mono Genesis 2 AVs in this situation. Evidently they came with the 32x originally. So there went a bit more money for the cause, but they worked. Of course, you’ll only get mono sound in this scenario, but stereo isn’t that important to me here, and besides, figuring that aspect out takes me back to head-swimmin’ territory. Enough of that noise.

3 – Here’s what I didn’t originally have, and also what resulted in the most confusion on my part: The 32x AV mix cable. You see, you have to route from the Genesis AV port to the 32x with this cable in order to see everything correctly, via the “AV out” port on the Genesis and the “AV in” port on the 32x. Not so hard to understand, except the Genesis 1 and the Genesis 2 use different AV ports, and the model 2 port is the same one as found on the 32x. So, the 32x originally came with an adapter that fit the cable into the Genesis 1. It sounds so simple now, but figuring out what people were talking about, again, had my head swimming. I actually had to go to a video game forum and ask where I was at with what I had. Since the original adapters for this cable are pricey nowadays, I opted for a third party cable that’s specifically built to connect the Genesis 1 to the 32x, and I’ve had no complaints.

So, what about my beloved Power Base Converter? Just how was I gonna play SMS games without doing some serious un-hooking? Well, it’s not an ideal situation, but since I now have AV cables for the 32x, and thus normally run all of my Genesis-needs through those, I simply plugged and left my model 1 RF switchbox into the TV, and whenever I feel the need for some SMS, I’ll take out the 32x, unhook the AV cables from the Genesis, plug the RF cable back in, and have at it. No, it’s not as quick and easy as I’d like, but the effort is fairly minimal, and besides, I can still keep all of my stuff in one location, on top of my big honkin’ TV.

And so, there it be: A model 1 Sega Genesis, loaded, cocked and ready to rock, with a Sega CD and Sega 32x attached, and though not pictured, a Power Base Converter at the ready. Yes, it looks like a big plastic lump sitting on top of my TV. No, I don’t care; in one sitting I can play Rambo III, Virtua Fighter, Final Fight CD and Vigilante if I want, and that’s a thing of beauty.

You know, I was there for the tail-end of the 8-bit era, but basically grew up during the 16-bit generation, not to mention the 32/64-bit years. After that, my interests progressively waned generation-by-generation. But 8-bit and 16-bit, that’s where my gaming heart always truly stayed; I upgraded over the years, sure, but I never stopped loving the consoles and/or eras I grew up with. Since most of those formative-gaming-years took place in the 1990s, man, this beefy monstrosity of a console really does take me back, even if I didn’t actually own most of it when it was new.

And on the subject of the 1990s, I’ve come to consider the Sega Genesis the definitive 1990s console. Let me explain: I’m not necessarily saying it’s the best console of the 1990s; that’s of course subjective, and I absolutely adore the Super Nintendo, which was my first system ever (Christmas of 1992, baby!). Plus, the 1990s also held the 32/64-bitters, and it’s safe to say the Sony Playstation dominated the second-half of the decade handily. (Though for sheer late-1990s-ness, the Nintendo 64 seems to fit to me, too.)

But when I think 1990s gaming, the Genesis defines so much of what comes to mind. Here’s a system that hit the US in 1989, and stuck around until 1998 or so. (Wikipedia says 1999!) The sleek, black console itself, sure, it looks like a product of the decade (even if it technically wasn’t when regarding my preferred model 1), but also the many different trends and styles of gaming it demonstrated. From the 8-bit sensibilities (with 16-bit graphics) of the early titles, to Sonic, to the innovative, technically-impressive stuff being produced in the later years.

And beyond the games themselves, there was the ‘aura’ of the console; the loud, in-your-face marketing (“Blast Processing,” “SEGA!”) and general aimed-at-adults attitude. It all seems so overtly 1990s now. And of course, it’s also the additional features (some might say gimmicks) such as the Sega Channel, and, naturally, Sega CD and 32x add-ons, that all make up the “1990s-ness” of the Genesis. Sega ultimately wound up shooting themselves in the foot by doing “too much” with the system, but as an artifact of the mid-1990s, man, this beefed-up console just screams “1995!!” to me. I love it!

Looking for a succinct picture to sum up my super-charged Sega Genesis? This one right here seems to fit the bill. The classic 16-bit Sega Genesis, being upgraded to the aforementioned “NEXT LEVEL.” In one system I can take part in genuine 16-bit greatness, venture into the then-fairly-new world of CD-ROM, take a peak into the future with 32-bit gaming, or take a look back at the past with 8-bit gaming; how cool is that?! Do I need any more reasons to keep all this on top of my Trinitron for the foreseeable future? I posit that I do not.

SEGA = BEEFED, and I couldn’t be happier with the results!